We’ve seen this handsome but unlikely pair together before. When Bentley’s new £220,000 Mulsanne was first shown off in public at last year’s Pebble Beach, it was accompanied by this very same 1930 8 Litre, once WO Bentley’s personal company car (at least, until then-new owner Rolls-Royce forced him to relinquish the perk).

The idea of the pairing? To make the point that the Mulsanne is the first all-new model to be designed purely by Bentley, rather than Rolls-Royce, since the 8 Litre. And that, as with the 8 Litre, the Mulsanne is the flagship model: bespoke, luxurious but (crucially) sporting, too.

Now clearly there’s no comparing the two cars; but it’s not just marketing speak when the Bentley designers and engineers say that they used the 8 Litre as inspiration for the new model. While others flock to the Mulsanne, I take a closer look at the 8 Litre, the second one built, and recently the subject of a gentle restoration by Bentley’s own craftsmen at the Crewe factory.

It’s a wonderful thing, this Mulliner-bodied beauty. Indecently long, but not as wide as many of the 8 Litres, apparently at the request of WO himself. Inside, it’s all legroom and luxury, the seating noticeably more opulent in the rear, with touches of simple genius that set aside the 8 Litre as something special. From the quick-release front passenger seat slider, to enable easier access for the driver (hindered on the offside by gearlever and handbrake), to the neat rear blind pull, the satisfyingly solid sunroof slider clamp and the wipers that traverse smoothly back and forth on a horizontal slider bar, the 8 Litre oozes quality. And that’s before we get onto the gorgeous tool kit...

Bentley’s engineering director Ulrich Eichhorn, a man whose enthusiasm for cars of all eras and take-no-prisoners driving could easily have outdone even those of the original Bentley Boys, can’t keep his hands off the 8 Litre. We both agree that there’s nothing out of the ordinary in the overall layout of the car – beam axles and cart springs are typical of the period – but the way that it’s engineered sets it apart both in durability and driveability.

Four valves per cylinder and overhead camshaft were a Bentley trademark, and the quality of the bearings, of the materials, of the lubrication, means that when we head off in pursuit of the super-fast Mulsannes, the 8 Litre rides the bumpy roads with surprising aplomb. Once we’re through the inevitable heaviness of the steering at low speeds and the trickiness of negotiating through the crash ’box, the 8 Litre seems to settle and quieten to a 70mph cruise which feels so competent that it honestly (honestly!) wouldn’t seem a bad idea to carry on from our Firth of Forth base past Edinburgh and all the way to London in the most spirited fashion.

And that, of course, was exactly the point of the 8 Litre, and exactly the point of a Bentley. Where Rolls-Royce sometimes struggled, the formidably competent Germans now in charge at Crewe have pinned exactly the meaning of the Bentley brand: innovative, solid engineering and craftsmanship to build the greatest car in the world, a machine that is equally at home being driven hard as it is at wafting.
 
Which brings us to the Mulsanne. Bentley’s flagship model has, for 12 years, been the Arnage, a dinosaur in car terms, but one that rose above its roots to deliver a fantastically satisfying, characterful experience. But it couldn’t carry on, and the Mulsanne has the difficult task of keeping traditional Arnage customers while appealing to a new line of potential Bentley buyers – some perhaps moving up from the company-saving Continental GT.

To do this, the Mulsanne had to make a massive leap not just in terms of luxury and performance but also in efficiency, as well as competing for the ‘best car in the world’ tag with not only the existing Rolls-Royce Phantom but also the new Ghost. Like Rolls-Royce, Bentley has really gone for it: the Mulsanne starts afresh, even to the point of being made in a brand-new building that’s taken the place of the old factory stores at the Crewe plant. Robots have infiltrated this sacred place, to do the jobs that robots are best at doing – monotonous but crucial spot-welding of the all-new chassis, for example – while the wonderfully complex shape of the front wings, their curves echoing those of the S2, are produced by the aviation technology of superforming aluminium. Yet just metres away from the mesmerising robots are craftsmen hand-brazing and finishing the bodywork. In the next building, an entire new ‘centre of excellence’ has been formed for the crafting of the interior, which takes no fewer than 170 hours per car.

Does any of this matter to the customer? Well, Bentley is going to make sure it does, by offering new factory tours on which prospective purchasers can see for themselves why a Bentley is different from a mass-produced car.

Sat inside the Mulsanne, it seems at first that this is simply a particularly good example of a typical wood ’n’ leather fest. The details delight, though, starting with the much-vaunted ‘ring of wood’ that wraps through the cabin, right behind the rear seats. With doors open you notice that this wonderful mirrored veneer is unusually mounted on hunking great chunks of perfectly formed wooden substrate and, if you’ve ticked it on the options list, there’s the best bit of marquetry in the veneer ever seen in production car history.
 
The chrome isn’t chrome, it’s perfectly polished stainless steel (for a less brash shine), the leather is traditionally tanned (for that smell which has so long been missing from car interiors), the buttons and switches are glass-faced and the Naim in-car entertainment system is, for now, the most powerful known in the production car world, at 2200W.
 
It feels good, really good – a long way beyond anything that the Crewe factory has ever previously produced. As good as the Rolls-Royces? Close thing: my personal feeling is that the Ghost and Phantom take a narrow victory on style for their uncluttered dashboards and consoles.

The Mulsanne, for me, wins on exterior looks. The way the light catches the sharp lines of the front wings and what design director Dirk van Braeckel refers to as ‘the longest styling line in history’ (the crease that runs from front to rear and back again along the base of the doors) helps shrink what’s actually a very large machine – 150mm longer even than the Arnage, though still smaller than the Phantom.