Outside's Go Magazine - Travel and Style for Men

Magnum Opus

On the sinuous roads of Tuscany, the limited-edition 2008 Bentley Brooklands shines as a magnificent conveyance

By Grant Davis
Photos by Colin Dutton

I WAS STANDING IN FRONT of Botticelli’s masterpiece, The Birth of Venus, hung in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, when I suddenly made the connection between this painting and the craftsmanship of the new Bentley Brooklands coupe. Both are bespoke pieces of art: The Birth of Venus was commissioned by the Medicis for one of their villas, and each of the 550 Brooklands is built to its individual buyer’s desires. It makes sense—after all, if you shell out $360,000, you don’t want the same car someone else is driving; you want something that’s uniquely yours. And perhaps more than any other car on the market, the regal Brooklands delivers, an original built from the ground up.

I was in Tuscany courtesy of Bentley Motors, which purposely chose the narrow, winding roads snaking past vineyards to unveil the world’s new titleholder for largest two-door luxury vehicle. At 5,853 pounds and 17 feet 7 inches long, it’s 275 pounds heavier and six inches longer than a base-model Ford Expedition SUV. Bentley’s point: The Brooklands may be big, but it can carve up twisting Italian tarmac like a sporty little Alfa Romeo.

But this car is more refinement than racer. When I first slid into the excessive comfort of the Brooklands, I was inspired to sit back and tour—in the Grand Tour sense of the word. Instead of throttling it, I found myself slowing to glance out the window at the parade of 500-year-old villas and rolling hills covered in neat rows of Chianti vines. Instead of working the car, I left it to computerized active suspension and 20-inch Pirelli tires to negate body roll and hold traction on the switchbacks between Villa Mangiacane, erected outside Florence and home to the Machiavelli family for over two centuries, and Villa Cetinale, built as the country home for the man who became Pope Alexander VII in 1655.

That’s not to say the Brooklands can’t book. Bentley powers this car with a monster, twin-turbocharged V-8 that pumps out 530 horsepower and a back-slamming 774 foot-pounds of torque, the most of any Bentley V-8 ever. The result is a luxury coach of a supercar that presses you into the leather seats (with internal A/C, heat, and lumbar massager, naturally) as it plows its way to 60 miles per hour in five seconds. From there, Bentley claims, the engine will steamroll the Brooklands to an insane 184. To put that into perspective, that’s something like a limousine keeping pace with a Daytona race car. The fastest I pushed the Brooklands was 90 mph—the ancient roads of Tuscany wend and weave through the countryside and aren’t optimal for sprinting—but for those brief seconds at speed, I fantasized that I was cruising happily at 100-plus along an empty expanse of West Texas highway.

Gunning Tuscany

Access
From the U.S., you can reach Florence on most major airlines with a connection in a major European hub (e.g., Frankfurt, Paris, London).

Lodging
Standing on the veranda of Villa Mangiacane (from $540; mangiacane.it), spy...

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