Jeeves would have approved, for this is the 21st Century equivalent of one’s man servant delivering a hand written invite to you on a silver platter.
Except that nowadays Bertie Wooster’s right-hand man has been replaced by Steve Job’s Apple empire. Welcome to the connected world of Bentley’s Mulsanne Executive Interior Concept.
It was inspired by the marque’s new CEO, Wolfgang Dürheimer who set his engineers and designers the task of producing the car for the Frankfurt Auto Show back in May.
I got the impression that Phil Holland, who delivered the project, was still slightly in a state of shock at being tasked with such a short timeline. Nevertheless he and his team have delivered an exquisite interior with its hand made pin-striped brown veneer inlays, creamy leather and, for the first time in a Mulsanne, a two-seater rear compartment complete with its own refrigerator and crystal champagne flutes. Jeeves would have approved.
In a leather bound powered shelf hidden in the upper part of the trunk is a 320 GB mini-Mac with 2 MB of RAM and 24 GHz processor plus storage for two sets of headphones or valuables.
Of course the car sits on low volume wheels, while inside my ‘pinstripe’ is referred to as ‘yachting veneer’ with a through console for the first time. There’s even a tissue box and the poshest waste bin, ever, in the center section.
Blue tooth and Wi-Fi connect everything and in the console there’s a double armrest with stowage for a ‘phone and a specially commissioned Tibaldi rollerball pen.
For the techy’s there’s a 15-inch drop down screen in the ceiling and, working with the Rear Seat Entertainment function in the car, there are twin powered picnic tables which come towards the rear seat passengers for easy use of the integrated iPads. And through a dedicated app it’s possible to control the lighting and other functions and communication sources such as DVD as well as the integrated entertainment hard drive. But in case that’s insufficient entertainment there’s also an additional DVD slot between the rear seats.
As a result rear seat passengers can be totally independent in their viewing/entertainment/listening/working environment without disturbing or detracting each other.
Jeeves would be pleased to learn that a cigar lighter is provided but would, perhaps, have been discombobulated by the adjacent USB port.
Bentley has overlaid a secondary electrical and electronic architecture for the communications network over the car’s system so the two don’t interfere and disrupt each other.
Did I mention Facetime?That’s a Skype like link where you can conduct video conference calls while sipping the finest champers from the crystal flutes as you waft along in your chauffeur driven Bentley.
Very Jeeves.
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