Bentley Arnage Green Label

Click Here for Full Screen Image - Click Here to Download Image

“However stressed you are when you settle into the hand-crafted driver\'s seat, within a few yards you\'ll feel on top of the world. Lose the throttle pedal in the ankle-deep lambswool rug, and you’ll unleash an avalanche of power that will startle an Aston Martin. Sixty comes up in a stomach-tingling six seconds — served up in a terrific whitewater surge by the seamless five-speed box.”

Costing £145,000 at launch in 1998, the new Arnage was the most powerful road car yet produced by Bentley and certainly impressed contemporary road testers, as the opening quote reveals. Rolls-Royce was in collaboration with BMW at this time and the Arnage was the first Bentley to benefit from the Munich firm’s world-renowned engine technology in the form of an all-new 4.4-litre 32-valve twin-turbocharged V8 that put 350bhp and 420lb/ft under the driver’s foot and 150mph within effortless reach.

Further technical highlights included a five-speed automatic gearbox with ‘sport’ mode, automatic ride height control, automatic load compensation and headlamp levelling, automatic stability control and aquaplaning detection. The luxurious interior embodied the finest traditions of British craftsmanship, boasting selected leather, finest wood and deep pile woollen carpets.

When the VW Group took Bentley over in 1999 they decided that, no matter how good it was, it probably wasn’t the best idea to have a BMW engine under the bonnet so it was quickly replaced with the old 6.75-litre pushrod V8 from the Turbo R.

Although this raised the power by 50bhp and the torque by 225lb/ft, it also added almost 600lb to the weight and blunted the handling and responsiveness of the new Red Label compared to the BMW-powered Green Label. Servicing costs and reliability were also adversely affected and today opinion is divided over which is the best model to have, traditionalists preferring the Red Label and keen drivers the Green Label.

First registered in May 1998, this Green Label Arnage has covered less than 54,000 miles in the hands of four owners (at least one an Arab Sheikh) and comes with a good service history comprising 10 stamps in the book to 26,659 miles in September 2007 (five at Jack Barclay, three at HR Owen and two at specialists) with invoices for another two services in February 2010 at 37,245 miles and in November 2010 at 44,778 miles.

Being offered here as the result of an estate sale, it is said to be in very good order throughout with an MOT until May 2016 with no advisories recorded (other than the usual \'undertrays obscuring some components\' clause). Always kept garaged when not in use and packed with all the usual Arnage luxuries, it is barely even run in yet and is being offered here at little more than one tenth of its original purchase price. You do the maths…