Does the Bentley Mulsanne Speed work every day?

We could have run a straight review on the Bentley Mulsanne Speed. I’d have reeled off a load of stats about how costly it is (£252,000) and how many cows and trees were donated to its cause (many).

I could have mentioned the sumptuousness of the ride, the sheer mass involved, the remarkable alacrity of its acceleration, all that sort of thing.

But I thought it would be more fun – and perhaps more informative – to just go and do some stuff with the Mulsanne Speed, and tell you how it coped. The catch is that these had to be real world adventures, the sort of things you actually do in your own car when you’re not chauffeuring captains of industry about the place.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a quest to maltreat Bentley’s flagship, more an opportunity to do a few relatable things in it over my winter break. First up, a run to the tip…

I have no idea what day the bins are being collected. This is because it’s Christmas and my local council is deliberately disruptive around bank holidays. So the answer here is to assemble all the cardboard and wrapping paper, thrust it into the Mulsanne and head to the tip.

The Mulsanne’s boot isn’t that capacious. It’s wide, but doesn’t go back that far, probably because there’s a fridge between the rear seats which must compete for space. I reckon it’s big enough to take a month’s worth of recycling, but I’m not risking glass or semi-rinsed milk containers in a car this valuable.

I get to the tip. The queue is huge because no one else could remember what day the bins are being collected. Still, there aren’t many cars that have this many on-board diversions and when we eventually park up, to bemused looks all round, the electric boot rears open and the cardboard can be disposed of promptly, allowing me to beat a hasty retreat before anyone can ask me why a man with a Bentley is doing his own recycling. One down…

We need milk. The Mulsanne has a fridge. A fridge that costs £8,225. Bentley justifies this by referring to it as a ‘refrigerated bottle cooler’. It has a frosted glass electric sliding door and inside are three chilled champagne flutes. Suppose the driver has to do without.

Anyway, this is possibly the most extravagant journey to spend 95p on a litre of milk since, ooh, December when my son and I took 85 miles and pretty much the whole of a Sunday morning to collect milk. Well, we were in a Lamborghini Aventador SV. This time the milk won’t curdle before we get home.

Where to buy from? There’s a good service station with an attached Budgens about 10 miles away, which gives enough time for the engine to get warm and enough distance for me not to feel guilty that I should have walked. I glide onto the forecourt and walk inside – they’ve only got skimmed. Skimmed milk is not very Bentley.

What’s more, I feel daft coming out, climbing into the back of the car, then realizing I have to have the ignition on to open the fridge, so climbing out, leaning into the front, then back into the back, waiting for the fridge to open, inserting less than a quid’s worth of milk, then finally heading for the driver’s seat and driving off.

Later I work out my 20 mile round trip, at 13mpg, has used seven litres of fuel. So about £8 (I’m insisting on super unleaded) to go and get the milk. Now that’s more Bentley.

The first of two challenges for my kids. This Mulsanne Speed is specced with something called the Entertainment Specification. Alongside rear TV screens, a premium Naim audio system and on-board wifi, it has iPad tables in the back.

So the tables whirr electrically out of the front seatbacks, and once they lock into position, another button press opens them up so you can slot in your iPad and remote keyboard. It’s pretty trick.

The task is to decide on the least likely thing to do with your iPad. So no live updates of stock prices, or viewing of The Wolf of Wall Street, but instead a quick round of Candy Crush.

OK, not much of a challenge, but watching the candy-coloured fruits detonate themselves accompanied by a bubbly soundtrack, when the surround is all thick chrome, leather and wood, looks pretty abstract. By the way, the Entertainment Specifications is priced at £21,565. More than a whole Ford Fiesta ST.

Luke, 10, has the keyboard. His challenge is to type on the move. This, I already know, will not be a problem. My wife informed me the other day that she’s never found it easier to text while on the move.

Same again this time round. After 30 minutes of mixed driving I have a short story to read and not a single complaint from the back that I needed to slow down or find smoother roads. Apparently, though, the flat angle of the keyboard is awkward and the electric rear seat won’t sit you upright enough.

I’m off to meet some mates for a mountain bike ride. The easy answer would have been to open the boot of my 530d Touring workhorse and throw the clobber in. The more amusing answer is to dig out my Saris bike rack and see how we get on from there.

Good news: I don’t think it’s ever felt more secure on a car. The thickness of the sheet metal and the simplicity of the lines means you can tension the straps with no fear of buckling a panel, and there are no fiddly spoilers or flimsy lips to deal with. It’s a perfect fit.

It looks ridiculous though, which, after the nervousness of the opening few miles and checking nothing has slipped or fallen off, is something I find myself relishing. Equipped with an Orange Five as an aero aid, the Mulsanne Speed is a mobile spectacle and is rightly gawped at everywhere, especially the car park of a trail centre to which everyone else has turned up in a VW T5 van.

Afterwards I diligently hose the bike down before it goes anywhere near the rack, and all my dirty gear goes in a bag. There are an undignified few moments (for the Bentley), when I get changed between the doors, but aside from that this is my favourite challenge.

The combination of plump winter tyres and good ground clearance made this too easy. The Mulsanne will happily burble along a firmly surfaced green lane and splash through the odd puddle or three, the wheels pressed firmly into the surface by nearly 2.7 tonnes of heavywork. It’s got good traction and the ride softly guides each wheel through ruts and runkles.

It’s bloody nerve-wracking, though, and more than once I stop, get out and check that no rocks are threatening the richly painted bumpers. Still, an impressive performance.

This does not apply if the surface you’re on is grass. A few days later I had to turn round in confines that were only restrictive because I was driving a car over 5.5 metres long. This involved having to reverse on to a patch of wet, muddy grass. I shifted to Drive, and before I’d even touched the throttle I could hear the wheels spinning. Hmm.

Funnily enough two blokes were not enough to shove this much weight forward so much as an inch. In the end it was a piece of cardboard under each back wheel that saved the day.   

Finding the least appropriate song to play in the Mulsanne Speed is harder than it sounds because of the associations you draw. Heavy metal? I’m sure Brian Johnson has one of these. Rap? Almost very hip-hopper seems to holler on about Bentleys. Classical? I bet they play Wagner or Brahms on the production line, just to get themselves in the mood. If they don’t, they really should.

I eventually settle on pop, with the full knowledge that this is pure Simon Cowell behaviour. In his honour I select some One Direction that is apparently on my phone. It sounds ridiculous, daft, so utterly lightweight and disposable in such a dignified machine.

The Naim audio system does it far more justice than it deserves – the top notes are effortlessly clear, and what little bass ‘Live While We’re Young’ offers sends sonic soundwaves thrumming through the cabin.

I go all the way to the top to try to escape the crush on the lower levels, but it’s no good. Festival Place in Basingstoke is rammed. And getting to the top hadn’t exactly been stress free when you’re negotiating a badly lit cramped car park in a vast car worth, with options, north of 300 grand. It’s the bonnet that really undoes things. All you focus on is the Winged B at the far end, occasionally glimpsed through the mist. It’s like piloting a banqueting table.

My aim had been to park it somewhere deliberately tight, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s just too nerve-wracking. It doesn’t have a good turning circle and it seems to me that the parking sensors are a fraction tardy with their warnings. I rely on the cameras instead.

In the end I find a bay that dodges a pillar, yielding an extra metre of length. I dash to Argos to pick up some Hot Wheels for my nephew and dash back again before any harm can come to the car. Stressful.

There is no picture to go with this because it was late at night and I may have had a drink or two. Anyway, I managed to persuade my wife to drive me home from a party.

So with all the dignity I could muster amidst merciless jeering from some mates, I slumped into the back and tried to get to grips with the drinks dispenser, rear screens and massaging seats. My kids mastered all this in moments, and, to be fair, it didn’t take me too long either. It’s all pretty straightforward.

There isn’t, however, that much legroom. Don’t get me wrong, the seating is sumptuous, the electric rear seats cup and recline you ready for a post of light body-pummeling from a selection of air cushions, but even when you wind the front passenger seat right forward, there’s not an incredible amount of space.

But what it is, is fabulously relaxing. It’s the quietness, and the pillowy absorption of the rear springs that sent me off to sleep within five miles. Had there been a bottle of champagne in the fridge I’d probably have been more alert, but all there was was a bottle of milk, left there from two days before.

Are you expecting me to say the Mulsanne rose to the task magnificently, that it was game for a laugh? It was, but only up to a point. No, it felt more like it was tolerating my lower-rent lifestyle and would far rather have a man reading the FT sitting chunkily in the back on his way to some salubrious corner of Mayfair.

The problem is that the Bentley has too strong a personality. No matter how hard you try, you never feel like you’re managing to inflict your lifestyle on it. Instead it’s forever trying to raise you up to its level, to persuade you to be the best that you can be, to be straight-backed and dignified.

Give yourself over to it and it’s a delight. You guide it everywhere with your thumb and forefinger, metering out the torque, gliding about the place.

It’s semi-surreal, vastly more insulating and isolating than being in a BMW 7-Series or Mercedes S-Class. Whichever seat you’re in, the experience is the same – you feel cocooned in a world very separate to the one outside your window. And there’s a lot to be said for that.