The 1996 Bentley Azure Exists in a World of Its Own

From the archive: Sure, it's $347,645, but it's really nice. Ray Hutton|Car and DriverFrom the June 1995 issue of Car and Driver. Four out of 10 owners of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys around the world also own yachts. More than half have collections of "significant"—that is, expensive—art, plus homes in other countries. On average, they own five expensive cars. This is no surprise to Rolls-Royce, which confirmed the news in a recent survey of 2000 current, previous, and prospective owners. The research was conducted as the Bentley Project Java concept car was being shown around the world. That proposal for a smaller Bentley convertible got high marks from the company's loyal audience, but a decision to proceed to production has not been made. In the meantime, Rolls determined there was a demand for a new convertible based on the current heavyweights. Hence, Project P100, which became the Bentley Azure. Its avowed intent: to be the finest convertible in the world. The Azure is a soft-top version of the glorious Bentley Continental R. The turbocharged 6.7-liter engine has been significantly enhanced by a new water-to-air intercooler and improved engine-management electronics. The body shell has been reinforced to compensate for the absence of a roof. Pininfarina devised and builds the new retractable top. The last time the famous Italian coachbuilder did something like this for a prestige marque was with the Cadillac Allante. See all results for Bentley Azure for sale near 11512 Rolls-Royce has made convertibles before, but the last one, the Corniche—confusingly also badged as a Bentley Continental—was something of a dinosaur, a coachbuilt version of the T-series Rolls and Bentley saloons that were superseded way back in 1980. The Corniche (a final 100 of which were produced last year) was unseemingly ill-mannered due to the flexibility of its bodywork. The Azure is much better in this respect. It has had the usual cross-bracing and stiffening at floor level to compensate for losing its top. The A-pillars are reinforced for rollover protection. Safety belts are integrated with the front seats, which, as on the Java, are derived from those in the BMW 850. Rolls-Royce engineers claim that the car's static torsional rigidity is 25 percent better than the Corniche's, which may not be saying much, but it feels altogether more solid on the road. There is a bit of shudder going slowly on rough pavement, but it isn't noticeable as the speed increases. Some careful attention to the suspension—new 255/55ZR-17 tires (lowest ever for a Rolls) with stiffer sidewalls, but softer springs and thinner anti-roll bars—combined with Rolls-Royce's regular adaptive damping system has given this new Bentley convertible surprisingly taut handling. It positively relishes fast sweepers on the highway, the dampers firming up as the car responds to the nicely weighted and high-geared power steering. See all results for Bentley Azure for sale near 11512 This car is fast, despite weighing 5750 pounds—as much as a medium-sized truck. Top speed is governed to 150 mph (Rolls-Royce thinks that is "adequate"), and 0 to 60 mph is said to take 6.3 seconds. The early pre-production car that we drove did not have the latest engine specification, and so had the same "more than adequate" (approximately 360 horsepower) output as the Continental R. On the boulevards, highways, and mountain roads of southern France, behind the Côte d'Azur that inspired its name, the new Bentley seemed plenty fast. This isn't a machine for tearing down the autobahn or thrashing round a racetrack—25 percent of Bentley owners also have a Ferrari for that kind of thing. Its purpose is to waft along, unhurried, cosseting passengers without a care in the world; the Azure is a car to be seen and to be seen in. Style was all-important. A key aspect of the design was to arrange for the roof to retract under a flush metal cover on the rear deck. That meant that a glass rear window was out of the question, so the world's poshest convertible has to make do with a scratch-prone plastic window, like the cheapest and most spartan ragtops. The convertible system is a massive structure, nicely lined and well insulated, and it's fully automatic—opening or closing at the touch of a button (marked "hood" in the English way) without any additional latching or releasing. We are sorry to report that despite Rolls-Royce and Pininfarina testing the electrohydraulic system for 15,000 cycles, equivalent to 30 years of operation, it failed on the first and only time we tried to close the roof on the preview drive. It was nearly but not quite fully erected when it gave up, refusing to either complete the sequence or open up again. An embarrassed Rolls-Royce technician completed the closure with a wrench and admitted that the roof's electronic control unit might need some more logic circuits. Such an occurrence with a customer's car would definitely displace the halo of

The 1996 Bentley Azure Exists in a World of Its Own

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