Bentley Batur 2023 Review | First Drive

The Batur is so many things to Bentley, and to its handful of lucky buyers. It’s a final, roaring goodbye to the W12 engine. It’s the next step on Bentley and its blooming Mulliner division’s latter-day coach building journey. It’s both a celebration of Bentley’s recent past and a look at what the future may hold. In other words, as £2million limited-run indulgences go these days, it’s really quite important. Perhaps that’s why Bentley saw fit to let one of just two representative prototypes off the chain for journalists to extend on public roads, leading a day devoted to the highly detailed, infinitely bespoke and, crucially, highly profitable Mulliner experience.

For yes, you could say the Batur is as much a ‘Mulliner’ as it is a Bentley, just as the SLS was more ‘AMG’ than ‘Mercedes’ way back when. Of course, the Mulliner name is that of an esteemed coachbuilder, that once ranked highly among a number of shops devoted to clothing naked Bentley chassis during the marque’s early history. Arguably it ranked the highest, given it’s the one Bentley eventually bought, turned into a specification and is now evolving, in the most extreme cases like with this Batur, almost into a carmaker all of its own. How this has come almost full circle should not escape one’s attention when considering this car. It is in every sense of the expression, the ultimate modern Bentley experience, both to buy and own. At least, that’s the claim.

Let’s get to the bit that is as important to the future of Bentley as it is key to why the Batur can be claimed to be a £2million experience. On its reveal Bentley claimed the Batur was ‘the start of a design revolution at Bentley’, because it sort of is. It certainly points in the direction of where future models – the next GT, the next Spur and so on – will go. There’s a lot more massaging of what were once sprawling surfaces. There are more subtle curves, more rounded (all-carbon) musculature but, conversely, we have a sharper shape to the trapezoidal grille and sportier, sharper lighting. You can sort of see Continental GT in the underpinnings but the dress, while still very ‘Bentley’, is reformed front to back. Indeed, the Batur features some 800 unique all-new components and, to look at, you could believe it. The ‘endless bonnet’ is a statement piece running from the back of the cabin almost to the grille. All in, it’s certainly a novel thing at the top of the Bentley line-up and in this ‘Purple Sector’ paint, looked properly exotic in the drizzly countryside outside Crewe.

And that leads us to what makes it worth the £2million. Customisability. We’re told the limits are ‘budget, imagination and legality’ when it comes to what you can do. Buyers will enjoy the company of the likes of Phillip Dean, Bentley Mulliner and Motorsport’s design manager, when deciding the spec for their car. Phillip flies all over the world chasing prospective Batur buyers for in-person meetings – indeed the process is ongoing – to design their cars in extreme detail, from overall paint colours and material use, down to individual stitch colours and personal touches. We had a go speccing up our own and it really is an hours-long process of iteration and conversation. In the end you get a car that could only be your own. We’re also told that if sold, Baturs can be returned to Bentley to be disassembled and the whole process entirely repeated for the new owner, should they desire it.

For as much as the Batur is the most powerful Bentley ever made, and certainly the 740PS (544kW) final flourish for the twin-turbo W12 engine is dramatic, the basis for it does remain that of the Continental GT Speed. So yes, you get the new e-LSD at the back and yes, it’s still all-wheel-drive. But the Batur is marginally lighter, with its carbon-fibre bodywork moving the mass away from the car’s outer skin by comparison to the Conti. The Speed is an expensive car ordinarily but is ten-times cheaper than the Batur. The hope therefore is for some compelling distinction in the driving experience.

We drove the Continental GT Le Mans Collection immediately before trying the Batur and, truthfully, there are differences. There’s added subtlety to the damping, there’s an extra sense of agility in the steering. You really get the feeling that while the raw numbers are similar – the Batur is only 40kg down at the kerb next to a Speed – every kilo is better-disguise, which is saying something given this prototype has some 18,000 hard testing miles behind it.

Of course, the big difference is the engine, which features new intakes and turbos and beefier cooling. It might only be a jump of 80PS (59kW) over the Speed but it seems to take the Batur over a threshold of sorts, into the realms of a car that’s actually over-engined. Such is the Batur’s positively anabolic barrel chest – the real punch is in the mid-range – that you can actually spin all four wheels on a roll, say, when using full throttle out of a village into a 60 limit in the wet. This is power that tugs at the tread blocks as it lunges the car forward, the tyres snatching and scratching at the road under its rotational force. Never in all the W12’s tenure has it felt quite so ferocious and quite so close to being too much for any Bentley it’s been fitted to, possibly, until now. That gives the Batur a somewhat heartening kinship in character with the turbo nutter barges of Bentley’s immediate pre-VW era.

It also therefore came as quite a relief when I was reminded on a firm press of the brake pedal that the Batur – like the Speed – features the largest carbon ceramic brakes in production. Even with 740PS, there’s not a lot these monsters can’t rescue you from unless you’re a proper fool, or have another car in quite close proximity to its rump when you decide to reign it in. At lower speeds there’s a bit of snatch here and there but by and large, you’ll get used to them pretty swiftly.

Speaking of lower speeds, what about the softer side to Bentley life? Can the Batur play the wafty GT? Well, the adaptive suspension is calibrated such that you could mill around in the car’s Sport setting and not be ruffled anything like you would be in other super GTs. The comfort setting is positively cushiony. That said – and we’ll add the proviso that this car is one of two engineering prototypes – we found more road noise than expected at anything over 40mph. Those massive slugs of rubber kick out quite the roar, though insulation from wind noise is as you’d expect, really rather good.

All in, is it different enough to the Continental GT to justify the price? What is a more unhinged character in the Batur is weirdly addictive. It smacks of the kind of personality we’ve always wanted from the Conti – a car that has over the years has faced off criticism for being a bit too businesslike, a bit too tied down and, dare we say it, a bit too German – and one that echoes Bentley’s quintessentially English torque monsters of old. I could honestly say the 18 lucky buyers won’t feel short-changed when (or more likely if) they drive it.

This is by far the toughest arena for the Batur because, right from the off, I’ll say I wish more was changed architecturally by comparison to the Continental. While the bodywork is all new, the margins are being protected in here. There is a partially new wheel with somewhat odd shapes south of the airbag, but the controls are still recognisably from the Group. Bugatti’s efforts in moving the Chiron’s wheel away from those of related marques further down the food chain were I think a bit more successful.

Happily, the paddles are different to those in ‘normal’ Bentleys, which while metallic and knurled in look and feel, are very related to Audi paddles and ‘clack’ the exact same way. The Batur’s spur-like lugs are distinctive – important for such a crucial touch point – and can be customised in terms of look and feel per the buyer’s wishes. But the dash, screen and centre console are all Conti dead ringers. Yes, the customisation options are off the scale – this prototype had a natural fibre into black into Purple Sector fade on the trim – but we could have hoped for more. The 18ct gold elements – the ‘organ stop’ vent controls, wheel centre strip and drive mode selector – are spectacular but if you can believe it, even in a £2million car, are a £20,000 option.

In fairness, this foible is not the Batur’s own. We can’t name one modern-day coach build that, while spectacular-looking on the outside, doesn’t have an interior that’s a dead giveaway for the platform on which it rides.

Technologically, in the Batur, we’re not a million miles away from the Continental GT. Coach build options lists don’t have things like ‘heated seats’ and ‘radar cruise’ as much as they have ‘hide of Polynesian Antelope-trimmed window switches’. So as far as standard fitment goes, the book and all appending texts are more or less thrown at the Batur from the get-go.

So yes, that means you get a nice big driver’s display – with graphics bespoke to the Batur – and infotainment screen with navigation, DAB and smartphone integration for both Apple and Android.

What is worth noting – and this could technically come under interior but why not discuss as a feature – is that the Batur is a two-seater. Unlike the Conti GT on which it is based, which is a well-accomplished four-seater, the Batur is travel for two only, along with some very swanky and exclusive fitted luggage for the rear deck. It’s also worth noting, that rear deck is a rather large canvas on which to go wild with your specifications and ideas. As is, in fact, the dash facia ahead of the passenger. In a way, the feature options are near endless in the Batur – see the above comments on the gold bits – the limit as they say, is your wallet, your imagination and the law.

So to summarise, I’ll admit I was entirely cynical going into experiencing this car and Mulliner overall. How can a car that is fundamentally and identifiably related to a £200,000 car, be worth £2million? Such is the beauty of coachwork, an artform rooted deep in Bentley lore and one we’re sure to hear and see more of in coming years. The value is in having something from the top of the tree, that is one of but a few, that in terms of specification has been meticulously curated by you and you alone – albeit with the help of Bentley’s crack team of stylists – and crafted by the best in the business.

In buying a car like this, you really become a part of the family. Not in the sense of a six-monthly newsletter from your dealer, but in the sense that you have the Mulliner boss’s personal number in your phone. £2million isn’t just the price of a Batur, it’s the price you pay to be a part of Bentley history; the price of entry into the inner circle of one of the most storied brands in all of motoring. It is indulgent, it is excessive, it isn’t sensible or pragmatic. But it is compelling and the appeal is real. To some the exclusivity is enough but it’s the experience of creating it and the fact the Batur does have a personality all of its own, to look at and especially to drive, that really makes its case for me. I just wish the cabin was similarly distinctive. Best make those specs loud and proud.