The first member of the Bentley Mulliner Coachbuilt portfolio, the Bacalar, has started its final test, development and durability work ahead of the build of 12 pre-sold customer cars due to start build next year.

Bacalar Car Zero, a purpose-built engineering prototype and the first barchetta-style Bentley of the modern era, is already accumulating mileage and passing crucial quality tests at a variety of locations around Europe.

Bentley’s Director of Mulliner, Paul Williams, comments: “Very much like Blower Car Zero that we unveiled lately, Bacalar Car Zero is the crucial prototype that we’re using to sign-off the design, engineering and craftsmanship of this ground-breaking part of Bentley Mulliner’s future. The Bacalar is a thoroughly modern iteration of the coachbuilt Bentleys of the past – extremely rare, entirely hand-crafted, totally bespoke to each customer and exquisite in its details. The whole team behind the car is thrilled to see the prototype shrugging off every test we throw at it, and we’re really looking forward to starting the build of the 12 customer cars.”

Just 12 examples of this striking, limited edition model are being created, guaranteeing rarity and exclusivity, and offering supreme luxury and breath-taking performance. Bacalar looks to the future of bespoke luxury motoring – each model will be handcrafted in Bentley Mulliner’s workshop in Crewe, according to the individual customer’s personal.

This exceptionally rare car is appropriately named after Laguna Bacalar in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, a lake renowned for its breath-taking natural beauty, continuing Bentley’s strategy of naming cars after remarkable landmarks which started with Bentayga in 2015.

A masterpiece of craftsmanship, the Bacalar is a seamless fusion of materials with an intelligent curation of technology. It draws on design DNA and materials inspiration from the beautifully sculpted, award-winning EXP 100 GT which was crowned ‘Most Beautiful Concept Car of the Year’ at the prestigious French Festival Automobile International and ‘Concept Car of the Year’ by GQ magazine. Materials include paint containing ash from rice husks, which provides a sustainable way of delivering a rich metallic finish, natural British wool and 5,000-year-old Riverwood sourced from the ancient Fenlands of East Anglia.

Bentley Mulliner Returns To Coachbuilding

The new Bentley Mulliner Bacalar is a genuine ‘roofless’ Barchetta – a luxury, two-seat, open-air performance car, the likes of which have never been seen before. Handcrafted to the individual customer’s personal tastes, Bacalar is the ultimate expression of an open-top Grand Tourer: a spirited GT combining traditional handcrafted techniques with the latest cutting-edge technology.

The Bacalar shares no body panel with any other car in the Bentley model line-up and derives inspiration from the dramatic EXP 100 GT concept car conceived to mark the company’s centenary last year. Indeed, it only shares one exterior component with a Continental GT – the door handle, simply because it contains the keyless entry system.

The rear clamshell, wings and top deck of the Bacalar are crafted from carbon fibre, while the doors are lightweight aluminium. Combined with the use of three-dimensional printing, it has allowed designers to create an even more distinctive car.

The Legend Of Mulliner

The legend of Mulliner is woven into the very fabric of Bentley. The tradition of bespoke craftsmanship has been passed down from generation to generation since the 1500s, when Mulliner was founded as a saddler.

The then independent Mulliner crafted a bespoke, 3-litre, two-seater Bentley for the 1923 Olympia Show in London, creating a bond between the two companies that would last for decades.

Perhaps the most famous was Mulliner’s design for the 1952 R-Type Continental, still considered one of the most beautiful cars of all time. The fastest, four-seat sports car of the era, the R-Type’s iconic beauty continues to influence design today through the Bentley Continental GT.

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