How Bentley can beat the Phantom – Thank Frankel it's Friday

So the Phantom sits alone once more at the top of pile, with no sign of any comparable rival on the horizon. I’ve not driven one so cannot comment on whether it deserves its unique positioning in the market, but I’ve not met anyone who has who’d argue with its right to the throne, which is probably all you need to know anyway.

But it has made me wonder what kind of super luxury limousine might rival it, and I think I’ve concluded the Phantom is a bit like the Mazda MX-5 and Porsche 911: a car so good at what it does and so firmly established in that position that even to attempt to play it at its own game is to invite unflattering comparison and references to being a pretender to the crown. Which no one wants.

So what should Bentley, in particular, do next? When I think of those I’ve admired most not only in my career, but indeed those built since the war, one thing unites them all: they’ve all been coupes. And with great respect to Bentley’s superb current Continental GT, that’s not the kind of coupe I’m talking about. I’m talking about those from the very top of the tree, a genre Bentley briefly made its own in the early 1950s, then allowed it to slip through successive generations.

I refer of course to the R-type Continental, the car that would probably never have been built had the body of the pre-war Bentley Corniche not been bombed out of existence on the Dieppe dockside during the war. Chief project engineer Ivan Evernden and styling boss John Blatchley saw it as very much unfinished business, and an opportunity to make a Bentley entirely distinct from its Rolls-Royce stablemate.

So in 1951 they took the standard, steel bodied R-type saloon and went to work. The prototype was called Olga, after the first three letters of its number plate, and she was more than just spill-your-drink beautiful. With lightweight, slippery aluminium bodywork, she was fast too, lapping Montlhery at almost 119mph. For a four-seat car in of the era, this was unprecedented performance.

I’ve only driven one but it was enough for me to understand not only how well its designers had realised their goal, but to wonder why on earth it took until the 1990s before Bentley got around to building another genuinely sporting luxury coupe.

Perhaps they could have called it the R-type Continental, but I’m glad they chose instead Continental R. Launched in 1991, it was the first Bentley to have a bespoke body since the S3 Continental of the mid-1960s. Styled by Ken Greenley and John Heffernan – both graduates of the Royal College of Art – it played a key part in establishing Bentley’s total dominance both in sales and perception over the Rolls-Royce brand, whose turn it now was to be neglected. Those cars were great, especially the superbly nutty short wheelbase Continental T. Which is perhaps why, with many variants, it survived in the market for a dozen years, until Bentley needed that glorious Continental name for the new GT, the cheapest Bentley coupe ever made, rather than the most expensive, as had been the Continental R.

It took five years for Bentley to do another truly grand coupe, but goodness, it was worth the wait. The Brooklands came out in 2008 and lasted until 2011, by which time it was the only car still sitting on the then ageing Arnage platform, and I believe only around 550 were made. But I remember cruising around Switzerland in one on some kind of plutocratic high, thinking there is nothing that could be more Bentley than this. I loved that car.

And I loved the Mulsanne for many of the same reasons even if, as a four-door saloon, it was never quite as quiet, comfortable, opulent and ostentatious as a Phantom. And I never understood why it did ten years in production without ever spawning a coupe version, nor even a convertible. Perhaps the market for such a car no longer exists, though I find it hard to believe.

So if I were Bentley and pondering how to replace the Mulsanne, I wouldn’t. Not directly at least. I’d make a full-sized coupe – powered by electricity if you must – with space for four large adults and their luggage. I’d make it fast, I’d make it sleek and it should have something slightly raffish about it too, because that’s what a flagship Bentley is. Or at least always should be.