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Toccare Motoring Club Bently's Arnage T is April’s car of the month.
Owner:Toccare Motoring Club
Following the uptick in sales for all of Rolls-Royce and resurgence of the Bentley marque, then-owner, Vickers, set about preparing a new model to replace the derivatives of the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit/Bentley Mulsanne which it had been selling since 1980. In a complete switch from tradition, these new cars would have bodies built at the Crewe factory with engines built elsewhere.
A number of potential engines were examined, including the GM Premium V engine and a Mercedes-Benz V8, before Vickers selected a pair of BMW powerplants. It was decided that the Rolls-Royce model, to be called the Silver Seraph, would use BMW's naturally-aspirated V12 while the more-sporting Bentley model would use a special twin-turbo version of the 4.4L BMW V8, which was developed by Vickers subsidiary, Cosworth Engineering.
On its introduction in the spring of 1998 as a 1999 model, the Arnage was available as a single model with this 4398cc BMW V8 engine, with twin turbochargers, developing some 350hp (260kW).
The basic BMW V8 Arnage was renamed the Arnage Green Label in 2000, its last model year.
In 2002, Bentley updated the Red Label as the series two Arnage R. This model was launched to contrast the Arnage T, which was developed to be more sporting. The Arnage R features two Garrett T3 turbochargers, as with the RL.
The Arnage T, also from 2002, was claimed to be the most powerful roadgoing Bentley at its launch at the Detroit Motor Show. As with the Arnage R, there were twin turbochargers, but tuned to develop 450hp (340kW) and 645lbfft (875N·m). The Arnage T's 0–60mph time is 5.5 s; a top speed of 168mph (270km/h) is claimed.
