The 18 exorbitantly rich people who ordered a Bentley Batur will be faced with a new question: do they want the newly developed Naim sound system? Seems like a minor question, but saying yes will tack another £25,000 ($31,669 USD at current exchange rates) to the price of the car.
That may be a small number when compared to the $2 million price tag, but it’s still roughly as much as the price of a brand-new Golf GTI manual – which is a lot by any measure. However, Bentley says that the sound system is the result of 10,000 hours of innovations and development.
Created as a collaboration between Bentley Mulliner, Naim, and Focal, the sound system builds on the “Naim for Bentley” units that have been available to the automaker’s customers for over 15 years and is now called “Naim for Mulliner.”
The new system is the best the brands have ever come up with, they say. It features a total of 20 speakers: six tweeters, nine midrange speakers, two woofers, two active bass transducers, and one subwoofer.
Read: Bentley Can Finally Start Making Baturs For Customers Now That Development Testing Is Done
The tweeters and mid-range speakers have new drivers and have been chosen to produce “silky treble.” The tweeters achieve this with a patented M cone that is named for its shape. Made of a single piece, they were designed for rigidity, lightness, and damping to create linear frequency response and low distortion.
The mid-range speakers were the hardest to make, per Bentley. These must balance treble and bass, and to master the transition between the two, Focal has done research into the frequency at which the cone becomes distorted, and creates distortion. Through software simulation and material analysis, it has been able to visualize the behavior of the suspension material that connects the cone to the basket, and come up with improvements to create crisp sound that can also be bassy.
Meanwhile, the woofers and subwoofers feature improved linear dynamics, and each speaker was chosen specifically for the interior of the Batur. The system will now be offered to the 18 customers who ordered the car.
The most powerful vehicle in Bentley’s history, the Batur is powered by a 6.0-liter W12 engine that produces more than 730 hp (544 kW / 740 PS) and 737 lb-ft (1,000 Nm) of torque. That can rocket the car from 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) in just 3.5 seconds, and onto a top speed of 208 mph (335 km/h).
Bentley expects each example to take four months to create, and that production will last until the end of 2024.
