The Bentley Mulliner Batur is named for a lake in Bali but performs like nothing else on the road. 18 fortunate buyers will experience the thrill.
Goodbyes can be difficult, so who can blame Bentley for wanting to bid farewell to its now-legendary W12 gas engine with one, final, supremely limited-edition car. The Bentley Mulliner Batur picks up where the Bacalar left off, a coachbuilt two-door grand touring coupe that will be made in vanishingly small numbers for a jaw-droppingly high price. Though there may be a gas engine under the hood, however, don’t mistake the Batur for something living entirely in the past.
Instead, the mere 18 examples preview what Bentley describes as the design DNA for its upcoming surge into electrification. The first fully-electric Bentley will arrive in 2025, a quarter-million-dollar embrace of the fulsome torque and near-silent running that we’ve come to expect from high-end EVs.
Bentley gave us a glimpse of some of the design ideas it had for that reinvention back with the EXP 100 GT Concept, the all-electric coupe it gave itself as a 100 year anniversary gift back in 2019. Now, the Mulliner Batur leans into that idea even further.
It’s named after Lake Batur, a vast crater lake in Kintamani on the island of Bali, Indonesia, though the goal is that no Batur car will look the same as any other to bear the nameplate. The core is what Bentley’s designers refer to as „resting beast stance“ — a big cat, for example, preparing to pounce on some unsuspecting prey. From that ethos, you get the long hood line that stretches into the body of the car, and which helps visually shift its mass toward the rear haunches.
It’s unmistakably a Bentley, though viewed side by side with a Continental GT from the current range, you can see where things diverge.
