The next time you are in the market for a £160,000 car, may we commend to you the Arnage by Bentley? It's a lovely little motor, and no mistaking. A bit on the cheap side, possibly. But David Beckham has got one, and he and Posh wouldn't dream of popping up to the shop for milk and the Daily Mirror in anything smaller.
The Guardian's loan of an Arnage followed a period of intense negotiation. They don't let just anyone borrow one. Not at those prices. And they don't let many people borrow one for very long. What kind of period would we need it for? We suggested a year - just to give ourselves an appropriate amount of time in which to acclimatise to the car, put it properly through its paces and thoroughly exhaust the opportunities we had identified for chucklesome, freelance prankstering. ("Wait until X sees us turn up in this!")
But a year? They weren't having it. In the end we dug in, played hardball and bargained our way into a reasonable compromise position: 48 hours.
It arrived early last Wednesday morning on a truck. The Arnage is one of those cars with an aura. It radiates a glowing halo of exclusivity and money. As the driver backed it down the ramps into my street, house prices within a 500-yard radius rose by 24%. It commands a gravel drive of a long and ultimately circular nature. Failing that, a pedestal.
It's a bumper, gas-guzzling monument to British craftsmanship and forelock-tugging - built in Crewe, albeit under the aegis nowadays of Volkswagen, but why would that necessarily be a bad thing? Its elegantly spoked and monogrammed wheels rise to thigh height. It is roughly the length of a tennis court. To get from the haughty tip of its bonnet to the softly subservient catch-release on its boot is itself a journey requiring a car or, at the very least, a bike. You could probably fit a Fiat Panda in that boot, and still have room over for Billy Bunter's tuckbox and, indeed, Billy Bunter.
Nice touch: the twin Bentley-branded umbrellas clipped on to the boot's partitioning, just below the trunk-mounted DVD player. The twin screens are in the backs of the headrests, aeroplane-style. They think of everything.
But this is the very definition of a luxury car - though with the caution that, where cars are concerned, luxury and bad taste are frequently seen to set off in opposite directions around a circle and then to meet each other coming the other way. The Arnage offers a sort of silver-service, Orient Express experience - the definition of prestigious and vastly seductive, and yet, at the same time, if you half-close your eyes, fantastically, royally naff.
Every button is polished metal, the top of the dash is a sumptuous expanse of carefully folded leather, and the shiny surfaces appear designed to resemble the back of an expensive men's hairbrush. Altogether, the interior is like the gents in a Park Lane hotel, and it's something of a surprise, upon leaving the car, when nobody pops up between the seats to offer you a towel.
But primarily, the car's luxury is space. Despite appearing to hold shelter for several families, this is a four-seater limousine. True, there is a lap-belt for an additional, fifth passenger in the back, on the padded hump between the two armchairs; but my understanding is that nobody would be vulgar enough to carry one. For one thing, their legs are going to dangle in front of the rear cabin's air-conditioning controls. For another, where are you going to rest your copy of Country Life?
I took the Bentley to Surrey. It had felt a little pent up in London, but somewhere around the Weybridge area, it began to relax and breathe more easily. I had expected to feel, at the wheel, waves of entitlement, to the extent that I might even start driving in the middle of the road, leaning on the horn. I had assumed that the car would bring out my inner Prince Philip and that I would spend a lot of time with the side window down, brittlely informing people that they should git orf my land.
In fact, the opposite happened - something far more humbling. This is a car that can launch like a cannonball, if you give it enough stick. And yet I found myself inclined to pilot it at a steady 28.5mph - and not simply because I was petrified of scraping it on the next parked Vauxhall Astra or suicidal cyclist. The low ensemble of cello notes from the V8 engine and the gentle pitching of the suspension (like a boat on a pleasant sea) seemed to create and insist on an atmosphere of heightened calm.
Accordingly, the uninterrupted comfort of my passengers became paramount. I started to corner with exaggerated caution. I took to passing the steering wheel from hand to hand, in the approved manner. I began to lack a peaked cap. Prince Philip? For 48 hours I was Paul Burrell. Happy days, though. I was in a £160,000 car, and I knew my place.
