The Bentley Arnage is a large luxury car produced by Bentley Motors in Crewe, England from 1998 to 2009. The Arnage, and its Rolls-Royce-branded sibling, the Silver Seraph, were introduced in the Spring of 1998, and were the first entirely new designs for the two marques since 1980.
Another break from the past was to be found under the bonnet, for decades home to the same 6.75 litre V8 engine, a powerplant which could trace its roots back to the 1950s. The new Arnage was to be powered by a BMW V8 engine, with Cosworth-engineered twin-turbo installation, and the Seraph was to employ a BMW V12 engine.
The Arnage is over 5 metres (197 in) long, 1.9 metres (75 in) wide, and has a kerb weight of more than 2.5 metric tonnes. For a brief period it was the most powerful and fastest four-door saloon on the market.
Following the uplift in sales for all of Rolls-Royce, and resurgence of the Bentley marque, the 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 its internal combustion engines built elsewhere.
A number of potential engines were examined, including the GM Premium V engine, and a Mercedes-Benz V8 engine, 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 engine while the more-sporting Bentley model would use a special twin-turbo version of the 4.4 litre BMW V8, which was developed by Vickers subsidiary, Cosworth Engineering.
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