Bentley Mulsanne Convertible Concept
Sketches revealed for "the world's most elegant and sophisticated convertible"
S1 Continental included in sketches
As it's a smaller and sleeker car anyway, it's arguably easier to make a convincing convertible Mulsanne than it is a R-R Phantom. Bentley has already stuck its flag in the ground here by claiming it will be "the world's most elegant and sophisticated convertible". Take that, Goodwood.
The rear haunches are inspired by the Continental GT (plus the S1 Continental Park Ward Drophead whose outline Bentley pointedly includes in the sketches), and the overall design shows Bentley can still do elegant simplicity after the 'surprise' of the EXP-9F. It even looks neat with the roof up: we wonder if Bentley will able to engineer such voluminous C-pillars into the production version - it will, of course, be an enormous roof...
Powerboats a design influence
But while it will be sold here, the Mulsanne Convertible won't really be a car for us Brits. As chairman and CEO Wolfgang Durheimer said: "The Convertible Concept will extend the appeal of the Mulsanne family, while enhancing the profile of the Bentley brand, particularly in new and emerging markets."
Make that super-rich emerging markets: we fully expect the base price to easily top £250,000.
The preview of the Mulsanne Convertible is actually one of Durheimer's final tasks at Bentley before he moves over to head up Audi R&D. The former Porsche man starts on September 1: seeing the Mulsanne Convertible project (and the EXP 9F!) through to completion will be new Bentley CEO Dr Wolfgang Schreiber. He joins from Volkswagen's CV division, but don't worry: before that, he was MD of Bugatti...
Because of the importance of wheels, nowadays (at the end of the day it was the consumers who always change the wheels before any other modification). Designers have to scale up the wheels to make the whole design 'right' for an A4 sized sketch. Whereas, they wouldn't do the same 20 years ago when they sketched on A2 sized paper. And the truth is that even today automotive designers would not scale up the wheel size on their tape drawings. Coz, those tape drawings are either 1/4 scale or full size. When you are doing a large scale drawing, 18" does look like 18". However, if it's a A4 size drawing, sometimes you do need to slightly adjust the scale of the wheel a bit to make it look right.
But, sometimes younger generation designers do sketch wheels way too big (almost cartoonish). I think it's just a phase which has been around for the last 10 years or so. By the way, talking about wheels look smaller on small scale sketches/renderings, those wheels on this Bentley renderings may look like 24" as some of you here may think. In fact, they are at least 40" in scale! That's visual deception for you.
Because of the importance of wheels, nowadays (at the end of the day it was the consumers who always change the wheels before any other modification). Designers have to scale up the wheels to make the whole design 'right' for an A4 sized sketch. Whereas, they wouldn't do the same 20 years ago when they sketched on A2 sized paper. And the truth is that even today automotive designers would not scale up the wheel size on their tape drawings. Coz, those tape drawings are either 1/4 scale or full size. When you are doing a large scale drawing, 18" does look like 18". However, if it's a A4 size drawing, sometimes you do need to slightly adjust the scale of the wheel a bit to make it look right.
But, sometimes younger generation designers do sketch wheels way too big (almost cartoonish). I think it's just a phase which has been around for the last 10 years or so. By the way, talking about wheels look smaller on small scale sketches/renderings, those wheels on this Bentley renderings may look like 24" as some of you here may think. In fact, they are at least 40" in scale! That's visual deception for you.
Because of the importance of wheels, nowadays (at the end of the day it was the consumers who always change the wheels before any other modification). Designers have to scale up the wheels to make the whole design 'right' for an A4 sized sketch. Whereas, they wouldn't do the same 20 years ago when they sketched on A2 sized paper. And the truth is that even today automotive designers would not scale up the wheel size on their tape drawings. Coz, those tape drawings are either 1/4 scale or full size. When you are doing a large scale drawing, 18" does look like 18". However, if it's a A4 size drawing, sometimes you do need to slightly adjust the scale of the wheel a bit to make it look right.
But, sometimes younger generation designers do sketch wheels way too big (almost cartoonish). I think it's just a phase which has been around for the last 10 years or so. By the way, talking about wheels look smaller on small scale sketches/renderings, those wheels on this Bentley renderings may look like 24" as some of you here may think. In fact, they are at least 40" in scale! That's visual deception for you.
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