It Takes 400,000 Stitches to Finish One Cabin of the 2021 Continental GT Mulliner Convertible
It’s a lot more than your Corolla.
The most expensive open-top Bentley is the ultra-limited edition Mulliner Bacalar, which comes with a price tag of approximately $2,000,000. As a result, most Bentley customers will have to settle for the second-most expensive convertible from Crewe, the 2021 Continental GT Mulliner Convertible, whose opulent cabin features over-the-top accommodations but also a staggering number of—stitches.
While the entry-level Continental GT Convertible comes with the option of a tweed roof, the Mulliner variant offers a considerably longer list of customizable features on top of its already vast standard equipment. Perhaps the most important figure to notice is 400,000, which is the number of stitches decorating the cabin of what can also be viewed as Bentley's most expensive series production soft-top.
It's hard to stand out from the crowd these days, and since Bentley's latest technological upgrades always filter down into the range-topping Audis as well, the company needs to show what it's worth through its hand-crafted interiors and trim details. With that in mind, the Mulliner Convertible comes with a new "Double Diamond" front grille, Mulliner-branded side vents, 22-inch 10-spoke painted and polished wheels with floating and self-leveling wheel badges. In addition, a Breitling clock with bejeweled hour marks, a range of 88 Mulliner piano wood veneers, and the option of a 2,200-watt Naim audio system are also added to the list of model-specific features.
What you're more likely to notice straight away is the leatherwork. Bentley's press release mentions diamonds 11 times, even to describe its "Diamond-in-Diamond interior quilting design," an embroidery process that apparently also took 18 months to develop.
Applied to all four seats, the door casings, rear quarters, and even the tonneau cover, the "Diamond-in-Diamond" interior quilting includes contrast stitching in two complementary colors to accentuate the thread against the quilting. Each diamond contains 712 individual stitches, all precisely aligned to point to the center of the diamond, which, of course, is just a rhombus. Either way, this feature requires "almost 400,000 stitchings."
Bentley's flood of diamond-shaped embroidery is impressive, but certainly not as wild as one can have through a bespoke commission. Now that the Bentley Mulsanne is out, we must turn our attention to a Rolls-Royce, with 2019's "Rose Phantom" ordered by a Stockholm-based entrepreneur with an extraordinary passion for flowers."
Ladies and gentlemen, roughly a million embroidered stitches:
In perhaps more important Bentley news than selected bull hides hit with all the rhombuses, the V8 version of the Bentayga is now available with an Akrapovič sports exhaust.
That's a twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 in the more fun to drive of the two Bentaygas connected to a lightweight titanium system consisting of a set of link pipes, a muffler, and two sets of oval tailpipes engraved with the Bentley and Akrapovič logo. Neat!
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