(August 17, 2009) Bentley Motors unveiled the Mulsanne, the company’s all-new flagship grand tourer, at Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance in Monterey, California.

The new Bentley will retail for close to $300,000.

The Mulsanne replaces the soon-to-be discontinued Arnage as Bentley's global halo car in what the Volkswagen AG unit calls "the pinnacle of the ultra-luxury segment."

"There's a very difficult business case for this car," admitted Franz-Josef Paefgen, Bentley's CEO. "The hope here is not to create volume, but to create a flagship."

“The challenge we set our engineers was to create a new grand Bentley that would stand as the pinnacle of British luxury motoring, offering the world’s most exclusive driving experience. They have responded to this challenge with real passion and the result is a luxury grand tourer that sets new standards in terms of comfort, effortless performance and hand-crafted refinement — the very qualities for which Bentley is renowned,“ he said.

For the debut, Bentley chose the elite setting of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance where it could be displayed among a sea of collectors' cars, including 1930s-era Bentleys.

Nearly 80 years later, while paying respect to this illustrious past, the new Mulsanne is a thoroughly modern statement of luxury driving and grand touring. Conceived, styled and engineered entirely at Bentley’s headquarters in Crewe, England, the Mulsanne, with its completely new and unique platform, goes into production next year in a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility within the Crewe factory.