2024 Bentley Batur First Drive Review: The Ultimate, Ultimate Grand Tourer?

The Batur, named after a lake 9,000 miles away in Bali, is essentially a hot-rodded and rebodied Bentley Continental GT Speed. Superficially, only the windshield, switchgear, and screens carry over, which gave Mulliner the canvas to create a car that doesn't read as a Bentley at first glance. When you're spending this much money, you definitely don't want the Joneses thinking you bought an ordinary Continental.

It's both strange and refreshing to see the winged B badge without the context of those big, doe-eye headlights Bentley is known for. The modern, more expressive lights give the Batur an air of aggression. Along with the vented hood, the fastback roofline, and the flat-topped rear fenders, there's enough athleticism in the body that it could pass for a concept of a future Ford Mustang. In reality, the Batur is a preview of where Bentley design is headed as the automaker moves to replace its current lineup with five EV models by the end of the decade.

The $2.1 million purchase price includes the personal attention of a Mulliner designer to help the buyer make sense of the bottomless color and trim options. For those with louder tastes, the organ-pull vent stops are available in 3D-printed 18-karat gold. The interior trim and front grille can also be hand-painted with a guitar-fade effect that seamlessly blends two or three finishes, as seen on the prototype painted Purple Sector. Carpet made from recycled yarn, leather tanned with less water and fewer chemicals, and a flax-based alternative to carbon-fiber trim offer buyers a chance to atone for their gas-guzzling sins, at least until they drive the thing.

No two cars will be alike, but every Batur will immerse the buyer in the same decadent experience. The cabin is lined with the kind of luxury you can see, feel, and even smell. The texture and weight of everything you touch has been considered and fussed over. The attention to detail in the materials and build quality is immaculate.

Building a new car on top of the Continental GT's structure comes with a few compromises. The A-pillars, roof rails, C-pillars, and rear fenders are all skinned with carbon fiber, but the roof itself is an integral part of the curtain airbags. Rather than re-engineer it, Mulliner bonds an aluminum panel between the carbon-fiber bodysides. The custom bodywork also results in a high and tiny trunk opening that requires you pack the palatial cargo hold with small bags. A hatch would have solved this problem, but Mulliner chief technical officer Paul Williams says the rear of the roof can't support the load.

The car also can't be registered in the U.S. via conventional means, as Bentley is only homologating it in its home market. That's the only way Mulliner can get these projects over the regulatory hurdles, as the U.K. allows low-volume vehicles to be certified using computer simulation rather than smashing priceless (and money-making) prototypes into walls. The handful of Baturs sold to U.S. buyers will likely enter the country under the Show and Display exemption, which caps the car at 2,500 miles of driving every year—not that anybody will be pushing that limit. If you see one in the wild, take a picture; it will be among the rarest cars made in 2023.

The Batur also serves as a celebratory send off for Bentley's almighty twin-turbo W-12 engine. When production ends in April 2024, Bentley reps believe the company will have built more 12-cylinder engines than any other automaker, with roughly 1.4 million pistons packed into some 120,000 powerplants.

The engineers ordered up fireworks in the form of an additional 90 horsepower and 74 lb-ft over the Continental GT Speed. The extra power is made entirely on the intake side with more efficient turbos, an intake system that increases airflow by 33 percent, and improved intercooling. The car weighs a hefty 4,950 pounds and routes torque to all four wheels through Pirelli P Zero tires, and yet when all 740 hp and 738 lb-ft of torque are uncorked, you can spin the rear tires in both first and second gear. Bentley says the Batur will dispatch 0-60 mph in less than 3.3 seconds, but we'd be shocked if the real time didn't start with a two, just like the top speed, a claimed 209 mph.

Despite the prolific engine output and the Batur's ability to briefly break character, though, this car is not a hooligan. The buttery exhaust note always sounds dignified and distant, like it's coming from 100 feet behind the car, even when a few burbles and cracks escape the exhaust in Sport mode. The eight-speed dual-clutch automatic swaps gears with sports-car urgency and liquid smoothness.

Like the Speed, the Batur relies on every modern chassis tool to wrangle its weight. There's rear-wheel steering, three-chamber air springs, adaptive dampers, active anti-roll bars, carbon-ceramic brakes, and an electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential. While the Batur weighs roughly 90 pounds less than the Speed, that's not enough to notice the difference. This is not the kind of car that shrinks around you as the curves tighten. It is stable and precise and entirely predictable with confident body control, but you'd never call it agile or nimble. When driving it hard, you're always keenly aware how much road it takes up.

The Continental GT Speed is the epitome of a grand tourer—fast, gracious, and stoic on back roads and highways alike. The Batur expands the envelope, packing in more excess at both ends of the spectrum. The speed and the luxury are simply extravagant.

Cars this rare and this expensive are usually built to reach deeper into the offshore bank accounts of an exotic automaker's most loyal clientele, but Bentley says that, for some buyers, the Batur and Bacalar are a first Bentley. Take that as proof that these cars are reshaping Bentley's brand identity among a certain set of people that can afford them.

Is it working on you as well? Even if your net worth is closer to the price of a Subway sandwich than a Bentley buyer's annual income, luxury brands only earn their status when enough average Joes and Janes hold the brand on a sufficiently high pedestal. If the Batur can't catch your interest, it's hard to imagine any Bentley can.