Towards the end of the 90ies Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars were offered for sale by their parent company Vickers. In a fierce battle for take-over VW and BMW were major rivals. VW seemed to succeed after the company had offered a horrendous amount of money. However Volkswagen’s managers not only invested far more than many analysts considered to be appropriate. VW’s ‘top brass’ had failed to detect that indeed they hadn’t purchased the Rolls-Royce brand. The result was not short of being a disaster: A tremendous investment had acquired but the Bentley brand. BMW achieved a contract that permitted them to built Rolls-Royce motor cars. The backbone of Bentley’s portfolio by then was the Bentley Arnage, powered by a 4.5-litre engine (delicate that this one was delivered by BMW).

Bentley-aficioniados claimed the Bentley Arnage’s engine didn’t deliver sufficient power – and that wasn’t too far from truth in the light of the fact that this model’s acceleration and top speed didn’t compare favourably to that of its predecessor, the Bentley Turbo RT. But within a surprisingly short period the engineers from Volkswagen in close conjunction with their colleagues in the United Kingdom found to a solution that solved the problem. Their feel for acting properly led to a result far superior to that shown by those VW-managers who had acted in the take-over almost like dilettantes. Without significant changes to the car’s outward appearance (which had rocketed costs through the roof) an up-date took place. The well-proven 6.75-litre–engine that had powered the earlier models did return. Prior to its revival it had been worked over painstankingly detailed and that included to change the electronic engine management completely. In the end the revised engine supplied more power and did meet the most stringent emission limits. Not only existing ones but those, too, which were expected within the foreseeable future. Similar care was spent on re-working front axle and rear suspension. But one example of changes that were not obvious at a quick glance but important might be that the rear seats offered increased comfort due to better ergonomy.