Motors North

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LET’S cheer ourselves up.

Pretend you’ve got £250,000 and want to impress a car-loving friend for Christmas. What do you buy him or her? Something that’s extravagant, hand-built and guaranteed to still be running in 50 years with a little due care and attention – a Bentley Azure.

But if you want this Arnage-based two-door for this Christmas, you’re too late. Each car takes an agonising nine months to assemble. But order now and Christmas 2009 could be one to remember!

This is a car that goes beyond envy – a throwback from a long gone era that’s hanging on way beyond its time. A three-tonne cabriolet with the character of an elegant old dame in a car world of bright young things – but still able to show them a thing of two.

You don’t so much drive the Azure as, progress.

It’s a car to cherish, not so much for what it does on the road, but for what it is as a machine.

I’ve just wallowed in one for five days and from its bespoke six-and-three-quarter litre V8, hand-built by a certain Steve Witkiss at Crewe and numbered 201273, to its fine yellowed burr oak dash and door trim, this 5.4 metre long leviathan was grace and sensibility in a mad world of aggressive driving and envy.

You don’t have to be wealthy to admire its engineering or its craftsmanship – but you do to own one.

It cost me £105 to fill the tank and took just 10 brisk miles of heavy throttle driving to see a gallon disappear in a polluting cloud of exhaust that carries 465g/km of emissions.

Even at my sedate cruising velocities the graceful Azure managed no better than 14mpg. An effortless 60mph registered a mere 1500rpm, once its silky-smooth six-speed automatic transmission had eased its way through the ratios.

It’s not all that silent a car. Like the myth of only hearing the tick of a clock in a Rolls-Royce, this craftsman-built Bentley suffers from the age-old car problem of wind and tyre noise. However it is subdued, and very distant at the legal speed limit.

But it has a darker side. Brave souls who push the "sport" button to stiffen the suspension and floor the throttle will find this massive carriage is no slouch.

The mighty V8 may be an aging design from the days of joint Rolls-Royce/Bentley ownership, but it is fed by two turbochargers that generate 450bhp and a massive 645lb.ft of torque – sufficient to push its bulk from rest to 62mph in a tyre-smoking 6.0 seconds and gallop on to an incredible 168mph.

Now that’s unseemly conduct for an Azure!

This is a car to be exercised gently; a beast that performs best when restrained; a gentle giant that’s very capable but just far too bulky to act the hooligan.

With a basic list price of £229,000 it’s one of the most expensive test cars I’ve driven. But with the addition of just three options, the price rose to £234,510 – recessed Bentley badges and finishing strips at £3290, a trio of embroidered Bentley badges on the fine leather seats at £420 and the optional, and immaculately finished, light burr oak veneer trim at £1800.

But you can easily spend more – a lot more. Just adding ceramic brakes costs an extra £19,650 while the 20-inch alloy wheels to go with those anchors will add another £3956.

Blink your eye and get carried away by the options list and you’ll soon break the quarter of a million barrier.

But if you have that kind of money, and every year there’s apparently around 200 people who do (despite the banking crisis), it’s unlikely you’ll be fazed by the costs.

Between 1995 and 2002 some 1300 old model Azures found customers around the globe. The model I tested was launched in 2006 and more than 200 were sold in the first year of production – a figure that’s dropped off a little as economies tighten on the international scene. But this high-end luxury car is still in demand.

The huge, lined fabric powered roof was colour-coded to my metallic dark blue test car and raised and lowered majestically in around 35 seconds. Hood down and wafting across the Dava was memorable – but I’ve driven more modern open tops with far better turbulence protection.

But this is a rare beast that defies justification and nit-picking criticism. It’s clearly unjustifiable in environmental terms; but evocative of fine craftsmanship in a mass production world. It’s like a rare painting that the majority can neither afford nor appreciate, but it’s there as a reminder of what Britain was once great at doing: building the technical best.

Sadly for the Azure it stopped evolving and while deep under the skin it oozes modern technology, on the surface it has the ponderous elegant looks of a duchess from a forgotten era.

The machine was finished with the iconic number plate – 1 WO – a magnificent tribute to W OBentley who founded the marque in 1919.

British in character to the core, I suspect the Azure would meet with his full approval – but whether he would be happy with its German ownership in the hands of the Volkswagen Group is doubtful.

Rating: 6/10

FINAL THOUGHT: The thought of an emissions cloud of 465g/km may be enough to turn an environmentalist sickly green, but with just over 1500 Azures running around the world it’s unlikely to make any additional impact on the planet alongside the many millions of small polluting cars, ocean-crossing ships, continent-spanning airliners and emerging industrial nations like China and India. It’s all relative – but hectoring bigots will point accusingly at Bentley’s three-tonner and invite us to damn it to hell. Count me out. The Azure would never be on my desirability list – but as a work of hand-assembled automotive art, meticulous quality and sheer power it is a behemoth in the lists of the world’s most outstanding cars.

Bentley Azure

Price: £229,000 (£234,510 as tested)
Capacity: 6761cc
Power: 450bhp
0-62mph: 6.0 seconds
Maximum speed: 168mph
Economy: Combined 14.5mpg; Urban 9.8mpg
CO2 emissions: 465g/km
ESP: Standard
Insurance: Group 20

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Azure like it!