Bentley Arnage reminds Andrew Frankel what modern road cars now lack
A month spent in a Bentley Arnage prompts reflections on craftsmanship, memory and the fading sensory appeal of modern road cars before a conversation at Bicester turns unexpectedly towards Formula 1’s increasingly polished route to the top
That’s the problem with a Bentley – you never want to get out. Traffic jams? Bring them on!
I have spent the last month being swept from place to place by a Bentley Arnage, some 17 years after the last one was built – this one as it turns out. Today you can buy an immaculate, late, low mileage example for around £40,000, which is quite a lot less than many a faceless modern crossover tin box. But your tin box won’t make the best part of every day those minutes and hours you spent behind its wheel. Yes, I picked just about the worst time to be knocking about in something with such atrocious fuel consumption and, no, it’s not very connected, but I really could not have cared less.
What it did was remind me that you don’t need wide, open, empty roads to enjoy whatever you’re driving. Indeed the key to a genuine and enduring experience is to find yourself in something that provides an intensely and innately pleasurable place to be, whatever you happen to be doing. I got stuck in plenty of jams in the big old Bentley and they troubled me not at all. I just sat back in its peerless seats, swaddled by the finest leather and admired the view across the walnut dash, down the imperious bonnet to the ‘Flying B’ mascot at its end. I’d get home after a few hundred miles and just sit there, not wanting to get out.
Above all, this is a car from which character seeps from every join. It looks and feels handmade because it is, and like all things created by passion, knowledge and expertise and from the finest available materials, the sheer quality of what results creates that sense of occasion. Robots will make cars to far finer tolerances, much more quickly and for a lot less money, but they could never create the interior ambience of a Bentley Arnage.
Something else about that Bentley, rarely if ever discussed these days: its smell. Manufacturers devote so much time to ensuring their cars look right, sound right and feel right, but there is one other critical sense that appears entirely ignored these days unless you happen to enjoy the aroma of synthetic upholstery and chemical adhesive. I am told too that, of all the senses, smell is the one with the longest recall. We will all have found ourselves somewhere, got a whiff and instantly be transported back years or even decades.
“Giving cars the right pong might be a small step in the right direction”
This happened to me quite recently: wandering down Oxford Street I smelled the same perfume an old girlfriend had worn 40 years ago; the recall was instantaneous and with it came back all the memories of our brief time together. Odd thing is I didn’t much like it then and still don’t. It’s the same with cars: every time I find myself in the company of an early Porsche 911, just like those my father drove, I’ll open a door and instantly be transported back half a century. When there has never been a greater need to make cars more appealing, perhaps giving them the right kind of pong might be one small step in the right direction.
I was chatting to Mark Blundell at the recent Bicester Scramble and discovered his extraordinary route to the top. His first home was a static caravan; his first bed the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers. He never competed in a kart and was 17 before he did his first car race. His route was through motocross bikes where he learned not only about balance and managing mass but, “when there are 30 of you all heading into the same narrow funnel that leads to the first corner, you learn to get your elbows out”.
What chance of someone from such a background making it all the way today? If you look at the best F1 drivers of 2026 – Max plus the Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari boys – each was racing karts while still in short trousers, a couple of them signed to an F1 team driver development programme and trained for the top. It makes me admire all the more what Mark achieved despite such disadvantages.
The first in a new line of Bentley Blowers has been produced in tribute to Sir Henry Birkin’s legendary design
By
Dominic Tobin
I became engrossed in one of those silly but captivating conversations. Someone retold a story that Ginny Williams once vetoed the appointment of a driver because when he came to stay with her and Sir Frank he made the mistake of making his bed in the morning, showing himself to be courteous and unsuited to the world of F1. And I’d bet plenty that, because of this title’s unique audience, someone reading could tell me whether it’s true.
This then led to speculation about which drivers were bed-makers, bed-strippers or bed-leavers. We agreed that Stirling would undoubtedly have been a bed-leaver, but Jim Clark and JYS were both bed-makers. James Hunt would have left it but Niki Lauda would have stripped it. We concluded that there was a generational split around the mid-80s, with those before that time being more likely to be bed-leavers and those who rose to prominence thereafter being bed-makers.
But is the era a greater factor than genes? We concluded it was, because while we could never see Rosberg and Hill senior making the bed, nor could we see their sons just walking out of the house leaving it unkempt. Damon, Nico, feel free to tell me just how wrong I am.
