Surprise! It’s Hard To Back Up A Bentley Mulsanne

Make no mistake about it, the Bentley Mulsanne is a big beast of a car. At over 18 feet (5 and a half meters), it’s about as long as a Cadillac Escalade – slotting in between the standard and ESV versions. And at 5,850 pounds (2,650 kg), it weighs about as much, too.

Reversing such a mammoth of a luxury sedan, then, could be a bit of a challenge, even for the professional chauffeurs that are bound to be driving most of them. So like most (almost invariably smaller) modern vehicles, the Mulsanne is fitted with a rearview camera.

But the display for those cameras on some may not be working to federal standards. So Bentley’s recalling a handful of them.

According to the statement issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, some Mulsannes had their displays programmed with an older version of the software that doesn’t meet the latest US regulations. Those vehicles may not show the view out the back within the two seconds required, so Bentley’s issued a recall.

Fortunately the recall is limited to just ten vehicles, all of them from the 2018 model year, manufactured between May 10 and July 25 of this year. That’s a pretty small number, even considering that Bentley only sold under a hundred Mulsannes in the United States last year – fewer even than the 250 or so Flying Spur sedans (much less the nearly 900 two-door Continentals) it moved here over the same period.

Fixing the problem will require simply updating the software. But in the meantime, if you see a Mulsanne reversing your way, you may want to get clear of it.