The $1.9M Bacalar heralds Bentley Mulliner’s return to coachbuilding

Bentley Mulliner unveiled its new Bacalar sports car earlier today, March 3, at Bentley Motors headquarters in Crewe, England. With only 12 scheduled to be created, the Bacalar will be the rarest two-door Bentley of the modern era.

The two-seat, open-air Bacalar marks Bentley Mulliner’s return to coachbuilding. Mulliner is the oldest coachbuilder in the world, tracing its roots to the 1500s, when the company’s original focus was customizing luxurious, horse-drawn carriages.

With a roofless Barchetta design that includes dramatic, tapered cowls at the rear and a myriad of available options, each model will be handcrafted in Bentley Mulliner’s workshop in Crewe.

“While Bentley’s motto is ‘Be Extraordinary,’ at Bentley Mulliner we look to take it one step further [to] ‘Beyond Extraordinary,’” said Tracy Crump, Bentley Mulliner’s Head of Commercial Operations. “With the new Bacalar we have been able to do exactly that, providing a select number of customers with the opportunity to express their personal taste in a truly remarkable grand tourer.”

The Bacalar features an enhanced version of Bentley’s 6.0-liter, W-12 TSI engine. The 12-cylinder engine produces 650 horsepower and 667 lb-ft of torque. The Bacalar’s all-wheel-drive system varies the torque split between front and rear wheels, allowing the Bacalar to use rear-wheel drive as much as possible during normal driving for optimum efficiency and dynamic performance.

Inside, the car’s wraparound styling flows from a steeply angled center console into the dashboard and sweeps into the door panels, which wrap around a semi-enclosed luggage compartment behind the seats for bespoke Schedoni-fitted luggage. The seats feature Beluga leather and natural wool.

As Bentley promised when it previewed the EXP 100 GT concept car last year, each Bacalar will include eco-friendly materials—like 5000-year-old Riverwood sourced from the ancient Fenlands of East Anglia and paint that contains ash from rice husks, a sustainable way of delivering a rich metallic finish.

The Bacalar is named after Laguna Bacalar, a lake on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, continuing Bentley’s strategy of naming cars after “remarkable landmarks,” which started with the Bentayga in 2015.

After completing the Bacalar’s limited production run, other new bespoke Bentleys will follow as part of the Bentley Mulliner Coachbuilt portfolio—one of three new Bentley Mulliner divisions. The Bentley Mulliner Classic portion was introduced last year with the announcement that Bentley’s 1929 Team Blower will be reborn with a new build of 12 supercharged 4½-litre examples. The third division, Bentley Mulliner Collections, will continue to offer luxury-focused derivatives of the core Bentley range, such as the new Continental GT Mulliner Convertible.

Interested in owning a Bacalar of your very own? Pack your patience, since you’ll have to wait for one to become available on the secondary market. Bentley says all 12 Bacalars have been allocated to enthusiasts from around the world—starting at $1.9 million apiece.