AN ANATOMY OF THE… THE BENTLEY MULSANNE TURBO AND TURBO R FAMILY

For Bentley enthusiasts, the SZ series of cars was where it all started to get good again. And then, it went beyond just merely good, and became simply superb. When Rolls-Royce took over Bentley in 1931, they were two very different marques. Rolls-Royce specialised in luxury leviathans for the very rich while Bentley was the builder of the ‘the fastest lorries the world’ as Ettore Bugatti put it. Blunt and brutal as Bentleys may have been – for they did lack the finesse of the cars from the company that swallowed W.O.’s old firm up – they had won Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930. That gave them the sort of rakish, sporting appeal that Rolls-Royce could never muster.

However, when the first Rolls-Royce-engineered Bentley appeared in 1933 – the so-called ‘silent sports car’ 3 ½ litre – it was a derivative of the Rolls-Royce 20/25. And that’s the way the vehicles wearing the Flying B mascot largely continued, with their chassis and engines shared with the machines crowned by the Spirit of Ecstasy. With the advent of the Standard Steel saloons, the distinction between the two marques was watered down even further. There were high points