I’m not crazy about the headlights on the Mulsanne. Ok, I just wanted to get my only complaint out of the way right at the beginning, because this car is fantastic in every other way.

In fact the weird looking bug-eyed headlights don’t really bother you so much in person.In photos, especially photos that are just of the front end, the headlights seem disproportionately large, but when confronted with the sheer mass of the car, you don’t mind so much.

The Arnage, which the Mulsanne replaces, was long overdue to be retired, but with so much having changed atBentley since the Arnage was first rolled out, I couldn’t help but wonder if the new flagship sedan would be doing the marque justice.

Volkswagen, Bentley’s corporate bosses, had already given us the Continental, a parts-bin engineered segment-filler if ever there was one.A very nice car, to be fair, but as utterly passionless as something designed by German accountants would be expected to be.

The Mulsanne is anything but filler. We’re told that Bentley was initially instructed to use a similar parts-bin approach for the design of the Mulsanne, but that they resisted. They wanted the Mulsanne to be uniquelyBentley, and although I’d rather avoid using the cliche, essentially British.

This need to do things properly comes though in the finished product, and the few VW parts that have made their way into the car are in no way noticeable. The interior is stuffed full of the wood-and-leather luxury that you need to make a Bentley, and even though Bentley is meant to be a driver’s car, the back seat passengers get the same kind of luxury as those in the front.