Bentley Mulsanne review: £275k EWB version driven

Which Bentley Mulsanne is this?

The longest and most luxurious of all. The Bentley Mulsanne EWB – extended wheelbase, to give it its full name – is a wonderfully OTT 5.8 metres in length. That’s two Smarts parking with an acceptable gap between them, or a Mini and a half.

To state the obvious, then, the EWB is significantly longer than a regular Mulsanne (250mm), and it’s all in the wheelbase. Or “entirely to the benefit of rear-seat passenger legroom,” to quote Bentley itself.

The price has naturally extended, too. At £275,000 before options, the EWB is around £45,000 up on standard. But ‘before options’ is a loaded phrase. Because our test car weighed in at £351,725.

Erm, what?

Yep. But then if you can afford a chauffeur, dropping £76,000 on optional extras won’t make you flinch. And most of them, naturally, are in the back.

So you can have reclining, airline style seats, with adjustment in more directions than you thought possible. Plus massaging, heating and cooling, naturally.

Between the two rear seats lies not a smaller, occasional seat, but a fridge (for champagne, beer, Sunny D… whatever your tipple may be) and many, many buttons for all those reclining and back massage functions.

Anything else?

There are also two tables each – a pair in the middle, for putting your happy meal on, and two ahead, fixed onto the back of the front seats – plus a screen each. Needless to say, the whole lot is trimmed in finer woods, leathers and sheets of glass than most mansions.

Best of all, though? The curtains and carpet. Seriously. The back screen and two rear side windows each have a proper blackout curtain that electrically furls across, while the carpet is deep enough to lose phones, keys or particularly small dogs.

Combine the two and this is surely the easiest car to nap in. Ever. I only tried it out in the office car park, while the car wasn’t moving, and nearly lost an afternoon.

Where was your chauffeur?

See, I’m afraid my pay grade doesn’t cover one. So I was therefore ‘relegated’ to the driver’s seat, to give perhaps the most irrelevant review of the Mulsanne EWB possible; what it’s like to drive, not be driven in.

The rear wheels are driven by a twin-turbo V8 engine, through an eight-speed automatic gearbox. There is 505bhp and – wait for it – 752lb ft of torque. That’s almost two Lamborghini Huracans’ worth.

At 2,730kg, though, the Mulsanne is nearly two Huracans in weight. Doesn’t stop it from going bloody briskly, mind; its claimed 0-62mph time is 5.5secs, its top speed a wholly silly 184mph. Just imagine the physics behind making a car like this move at a speed like that.

Sounds quick in theory. In practice?

Holy hell, it’s quick. But it’s all so smooth and cossetting, with the Mulsanne's monstrous performance delivered without a sledgehammer blow. Wouldn’t want to wake your napping passengers, would you?

The engine revs to just 4,500rpm; the gearbox changes up abruptly regardless of whether it’s in Drive or Manual. The throttle response is also as padded as the carpet, while the steering is verrrrry slow. The end goal? Keeping everything inside as calm as possible.

It’s actually damn good should you want to shrug all that off and drive it with some vigour, mind. The EWB grips tenaciously and has more eager body control than a near six-metre saloon car should, or needs to.

It’s not exhilarating like a BMW M5 or Merc E63 AMG, but driving this quickly is fun in its own, deeply inappropriate way. And the Mulsanne’s chassis just about stands up to whatever immature abuse you wish to throw its way.

Stop misbehaving.

Fine. Back in town, it’s obviously not the work of a moment to park this Mulsanne, or squeeze it through rush hour traffic. But the very straight lines of its styling help give you an idea of where to place it, and people tend to move out of the way of a Bentley in a way they wouldn’t for a Maybach S-Class.

These are all worries for your chauffeur, of course. “Designed for customers with a preference for being driven, the Bentley Mulsanne Extended Wheelbase offers a first-class air-travel experience for the road,” says Bentley.

That may be why you’re reading this. But you want to know your chauffeur can still have fun, right? And in the EWB, as they drive an empty car from dropping you off at your latest social do, there’s a good chance they will…