The Bentley Brooklands Was The Ultimate $400,000 Luxury Coupe

this is a 2009 bentley brooklyns and it is the ultimate luxury coupe or at least it was bentley's flagship luxury coupe back in 2009 when it was new back then this car had a sticker price of more than 400 000 which translates to just under a half million dollars in today's money and today i'm going to review this car and show you what that money got you [Music] i've borrowed this bentley brooklyn's from rancho santa fe autos which is a small car dealership here in the san diego area with an excellent inventory of cool cars from exotics to classics to just interesting and rare stuff you can check out rancho santa fe autos by clicking the link in the description below but let's talk brooklyn's the brooklyn's was essentially a coupe version of the bentley azure which i've already reviewed that was a luxury convertible this was aimed at wealthy buyers who wanted a giant luxury two-door car with a fixed roof instead of a convertible top now back then the brooklyns and the azure were bentley's flagship models the thinking was if you were rich you bought a continental gt if you were wealthy you bought one of these compared to other recent bentley models the brooklyn's is exceptionally rare when this car came out bentley said they would limit production to just 500 units but the brooklyn's debuted into the global economic recession in 2008 and 2009 so they had trouble selling even those on paper the brooklyn's is pretty cool it uses a twin-turbo v8 with 530 horsepower and 775 pound-feet of torque that is a serious number better yet depreciation has taken its toll on the brooklyns this one is offered for sale by rancho santa fe autos for under a hundred thousand dollars which is truly a fraction of its original price and today i'm going to show you around the brooklyns and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a doug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the brooklyns with getting in and that means starting with the key which is unusually simple and basic you can see there's the bentley logo on one side you flip it over and you have a lock button and an unlock button and that's it there's no trunk popper there's no alarm button there's no special styling considering you paid 400 grand for this thing just a simple everyday key and next up climbing inside we move on to the door there's surprisingly a lot to cover with this door for one thing it is absolutely huge this is a big car and this door has to provide access to both the back and front seats so it's really long so long in fact that it has two door handles if you're sitting in the front seat you can open the door by pulling the front door handle if you're sitting in the back seat there's a door handle for you also just reach forward and you can see there is a second door handle further back towards the rear seats for rear passengers to grab when they're getting out of the brooklands it's not often that you see a big coop that is so big it's gonna have two door handles for one door now some other notable quirks with the door one is the trim on the top of the door you have this beautiful wood trim with the bentley b winged logo placed right in the middle absolutely gorgeous opulent look precisely as you'd expect given this car's status and cost but probably the best part of this door area is this door sill some cars leave this blank but not for four hundred thousand dollars you can see it says bentley brooklyn's over in one half and then the other half is actually personalized it specifically says bentley brooklyn's commissioned for jay edwin holliday you know you're rich when you bentley says your name on it when you open the door and next up we move on to one of my very favorite brooklyn's features in the center console you can see there's this little switch here next to the gear lever looks kind of unfamiliar it turns out you press that switch and all the windows roll down at once take a look you can see they all go down in unison with the push of one button now this is especially cool because the brooklyn's is pillarless meaning there's no b pillar when you open the front and back windows you just have one giant opening for air to flow through it really enhances your relaxed coupe driving experience and so the cool thing about being able to roll down all the windows at once is you just press one button and you then have these giant openings on the side very special feature and of course it works the other way as well so you're driving along like this and you're parking or it starts raining just pull on the switch and then the windows all go up at once so you can be inside your quiet bentley cocoon with the push of a button as well and next up i'm gonna move on to the other quirks and features in the brooklyn's interior one is just how beautiful and stately it is in here now the brooklyn's was out at the same time as the continental gt and the continental gt was faster and more powerful but the brooklyn's was more expensive the difference was intended to be that the continental gt was for the young buyer who wanted something cool and new and fresh and wanted to go fast the brooklyn's was for the wealthy old money buyer and you can really tell in this interior you have this same upright dashboard that was characteristic of bentleys for years and years and the materials the quality the finishes it's all about old-school luxury in here rather than technology i'll give you some examples of the old-school luxury in this interior starting with the colors you can see most of the interior is cream but there are also dark red accents to perfectly match the exterior color for instance the steering wheel is half cream and half dark red so that the exterior is carried inside same deal with the leather on the dashboard you can see the top half is dark red to match the exterior color and the lower half is cream to match the rest of the interior you don't get a lot of dark red and cream interiors on new sporty cars and the old school luxury and finishes continues from there check out the wood trim on the dashboard very beautiful wood as you'd expect from a bentley but the thing i like is the trim next to the wood trim you have a separate wood so you have two different types of wood placed together again not something you find in modern cars that is very much an old-school pure luxury trait and another old-school trait in this car if you're a young person with an expensive car you probably want to turn up your music so everybody's looking at you not so in the brooklyns in fact the radio is actually hidden from view behind this wood panel with a bentley flying b on it you have to press that in order to access the radio but in this car's default state the radio is out of the way because you drive this car you want to waft along in pure silence and by the way i feel like now is maybe the time to introduce the window sticker and discuss how a car like this becomes a 408 000 vehicle so here's the deal the base price is 341 000 so you're already in a tremendously expensive territory before you start adding options but there are many options for one by far the most expensive option on this car is carbon ceramic brakes you think porsche charges a lot for carbon ceramic brakes at like 10 to 12 000 in this car they're 30 000 [Music] that is a serious option but the options just continue from there that two-tone wood that i liked on the dashboard bentley calls that the vavona veneer with a cherry substrate and they charge you fifty two hundred dollars for it just for some extra wood trim on your dashboard and all of the other options are similar to this and similarly expensive although you go down and you find my favorite option which is called single thin fine lines for those thin fine lines which i think is the pinstriping on the outside of the car bentley charges you only 240 dollars which is a bargain actually but maybe the craziest option in this entire car is the backup camera which is now federally mandated on all new cars sold in the united states back in o nine it wasn't mandatory and if you wanted to get it in your bentley they charged you two thousand five hundred dollars for a backup camera which is now standard on a thirteen thousand dollar mitsubishi mirage now one interesting thing if you look on the window sticker at the back up camera line item you can see it says reversing camera to sat nav screen but i already kind of showed you around this interior and there is no sat nav screen so where does the backup camera display go well the answer is there is a screen in this interior but it's hidden you go onto the ceiling you press this little i button with an arrow pointing up and the infotainment screen rises up from the dashboard it's hidden face down until you want it and once the infotainment screen is up you can clearly tell this is not a touch screen it's too old and too far away from your reach instead it's controlled by a remote the remote is located in this little pouch in the driver's foot well designed perfectly to hold the infotainment remote there's also another pouch same size in the passenger footwell so you can share remote duties if you want but you press this remote and you can go through the infotainment system although it's worth noting this is pretty much only a navigation system everything else your radio your climate controls your gauges is in the center control stack so the screen that rises up is pretty much just navigation and that backup camera and next up another interesting quirk of the brooklyns this car has no cup holders bentley apparently didn't feel that was necessary instead you have some rather unusual items in the center console area for one thing the first item you see when you look in these area these armrests or at least they look like armrests but actually you can open them open up the one on the passenger side and you have the bentley phone which is a little old-school phone with a small screen and a bentley flying b logo on it that is a pretty cool little feature now if you open up the armrest on the driver side you have a little storage compartment in there and a little screen that i guess was used for the phone but you also have this card that contains your voice command information this car was probably one of the very first bentley models with a voice command system and this card was intended to instruct you on how to use it to make calls or do other things with your built-in phone now the other interesting item in the center console this car you fold back these armrests and you have this kind of wood roll top piece if you roll it back there are some strange items in here one is the heated seat controls you have six different levels of heated seating a lot of volkswagen audi bentley models had this at the time i always thought it was absurd can anybody really tell the difference between seat heater level four and seat heater level five apparently bentley felt their customers butts were really that sensitive the other interesting thing at the back of this rolltop center console area you do have like a little holder but you can tell it's not designed for cups instead i believe this is a tissue holder you're supposed to get a tissue box that fits into this space and then you can leave tissues in there and pull them out when you need them apparently bentley felt a tissue holder was more important than a cup holder strange decision and next up a few other notable items in the front here one go to the gauge cluster take a look at the tachometer it's unusual for its low red line you can see it tops out at 5000 rpm and redline starts around 45 4600 rpm bentley engineered this car to be as relaxed as possible so that even at full throttle the engine is not really working all that hard and you don't have to hear it getting all loud and disturbing your peace and quiet the other item i find interesting in the front seat of this car you spend over 400 000 and you don't get a sunroof that was intentional the thinking was if you wanted the sun you would buy the azure which was the convertible version of this car but if you wanted a coupe then you got a coupe and you couldn't get a brooklyn's with an open or glass roof and next up we move on to the back seat of the brooklyns and while it's usually rather difficult to get into the backseat of these two-door cars it's pretty easy in the brooklyns due to its massive size basically you just pull up on this lever on the side of the seat you push the seat forward and it automatically kind of glides forward at the same time and then it gives you a pretty big opening to get into the back assuming you're willing to wait which of course i am and then you can just climb right in and you have your back seat all to yourself now once you're in the back seat you'll find that there's actually quite a bit to talk about back here usually two-door cars have kind of after thought back seats but not in the brooklyns for one thing it's actually reasonably roomy back here even with the front seats in a normal position you have quite a bit of room as a rear passenger in the brooklands owing to the fact that this car is massively long but beyond that it's also surprisingly luxurious back here for one thing you have the same wood trim on the sides of the seat that you do on the top of the front doors including the winged bentley b right in the middle adding to your luxury experience you also have seat controls back here these little switches in the rear center console will actually move the seat forward or backwards which is surprising for a rear seat in a two-door car i'm not sure if i've seen that before and below the seat controls you have heated rear seats two stages not six like in front but heated rear seats and a two-door car from 09 is still a pretty big deal of course another luxury you have back here is power windows i showed you that if you're sitting in the front you can roll down all the windows at once but rear passengers can also individually roll down their tiny little quarter window seem a little odd to have just the rear window down with the front window up but it is possible in this car if that's what you want and check this out another interesting feature back here in the center console you have another one of these wood roll top things you roll it back and you can see there's a cigarette lighter in here and what appears to be like a cup holder thing actually that's a rear seat ash tray you're supposed to put your ashes in there and then you can easily remove it to dump your ashes once you've filled it up this was bentley's solution for a rear ashtray in case you really wanted to have your rear seat passengers smoking you have this kind of drink cup looking thing with a b logo on it for your ashtray and next up we move outside the brooklyns and to the back where there are a few interesting items worth noting one is how you get into the trunk now if the car is unlocked there's a little trunk popper button right above the license plate but if it's locked and you want to get into the trunk i already showed you there's no trunk popper on the key so how do you get back here well you can see the winged bentley b logo back here of course but there's a hidden trick to it you can flip up the b and that's where the keyhole is for the trunk then just stick in your key turn it and you can open it right up pretty cool now once you're in the trunk there are a few notable items back here worth mentioning probably my favorite is the umbrellas right up against the back of the trunk you have two separate umbrellas in specific umbrella positions and these are of course bentley umbrellas with the logo on it and the british racing green color also in the trunk you have this bentley case this little zippered pouch that is for your trickle charger so if you're going to park your brooklyns for a long time and not use it you can use this charger to plug it in to this little cord in the trunk and it keeps your battery from going dead while you're not driving your brooklyns but my very favorite thing around back has nothing to do with the trunk or opening the trunk instead it's on the rear bumper because take a look at the backup camera location yes this is it right in the middle of your rear bumper very obvious looks ridiculous everybody in modern cars integrates it like above the license plate out of view but not bentley on the brooklyn it's just this wart in your rear bumper always there looking unusually obvious for a backup camera and next up we move around to the front of the brooklyns where there are more quirks and features i'm going to start under the hood one of my very favorite things in any engine bay is this plaque that says six and three-quarters liter brooklyns it seems so proper so perfect so fitting of this car of course bentley doesn't refer to this as a 6.75 liter engine but rather a six and three quarters now like i mentioned this v8 twin turbocharged 530 horsepower 775 pound-feet of torque at the time it had more torque than any other gas-powered v8 engine ever in this car which is pretty cool now another item worth noting up here is the hood ornament you know that bentley's logo is this b in the center and then wings on the sides the hood ornament on the brooklyns is a 3d version of that you have a b with actual wings behind it it's bentley's attempt to make a 3d ornamental version of their well-known logo one other interesting thing about this hood ornament it's designed to retract in an accident so if there's pressure or damage from a crash on this horde ornament it will actually fall back into the grill this is intended to make it safer for pedestrians so if you hit a pedestrian it doesn't just stab them instead the b logo falls away to make the impact not as bad and finally i want to talk about this car's styling because i love this car's styling this was among the last of the big old-school luxury coupes rolls-royce also made a coupe version of the phantom around this time also a very rare car but these were the last old-school big luxury coupes until the wraith came out years later now i love the wraith but it doesn't have the same look as a car like the brooklyn's this was so understated you just didn't know what you were looking at unless you knew and then you turned your head and stared with an open mouth because you knew how expensive this car was and how rare and how special it is this car really was one of the last of the old school and given market changes and trends and the increase in suv popularity i highly doubt that bentley will ever again make another flagship full-size luxury coupe like this it was a very special car and kind of the end of an era and so those are the quirks and features of the bentley brooklyns now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the brooklyns i remember back when this thing came out i thought it was the coolest thing in the world and it really was they were rare they were special but you kind of had to know to know it just looked like a garnage coupe it was so understated and a lot of people asked why would you get a brooklyn's when you could have a continental gt the continental gt was cheaper faster more powerful it was better right but it was a certain type of buyer who bought the brooklyns uh a statistic i heard back in the day was that the average continental gt customer was worth three million dollars the average arnage customer was worth 30 million dollars and of course that extends to the brooklyns being essentially the coop version of the arnage all right so what's this thing like on the road it's big this is a big coop it feels big it drives big um that was the intent you know back in the 30s 40s 50s if you were rich you bought a big coop to kind of show the world the cadillac eldorados and rolls royces and bentleys and all of that stuff now it's very comfortable in here as you might expect um nice and quiet and relaxed and luxurious uh the ride quality is excellent although not as good as modern ultra luxury cars you feel bumps a little bit more than you would in a new mulsanne or a rolls phantom or something like that now regarding the braking in this car the brakes are fine but i wouldn't call them any better than that believe it or not um this is a big heavy car and despite these 30 thousand dollar car breaking ceramic brakes it seems like it's actually kind of fighting to stop the car if you uh are trying to really push it to stop but the theory behind carbon ceramic brakes is not that they have better stopping power but they dissipate heat faster which means they can stay good for longer and that is a good feature to have in a car that's this heavy as for steering and handling this is where the car really starts to lose its kind of sporty credential yes it's fast yes it's got all this power um but it doesn't steer like a sporty car it's a big heavy lumbering car and they haven't really made much of an attempt to neutralize that ultimately i think this car is really cool it is not four hundred and eight thousand dollar cool no nine money half million dollars today basically but it's crazy how cheap this has gotten relative to how expensive it was back then and it's still a pretty relevant car yeah it doesn't have the newest tech but it didn't have the newest tech when it first came out um it's all about kind of the luxury the opulence the materials there's a very limited number of these it's a special car and i think it's kind of cool and so that's the 2009 bentley brooklyns i almost never see these they're tremendously rare 500 units for the entire planet it turns out the kind of person spending a half million dollars on a car doesn't want a giant rather impractical luxury coupe and in fact after this car went out of production bentley abandoned the flagship coupe segment and they haven't been back since but it is cool to check this car out and examine the flagship bentley from a decade ago anyway now it's time to give the brooklyns a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the brooklyn's looks nice stately and sleek and it gets a 6 out of 10. acceleration does 0-60 in 5.2 seconds and it gets a 5 out of 10. handling it's a big heavy behemoth of a car and it gets a 4 out of 10. fun factor is ok it's fun to pilot this big thing but it's not radically exciting to drive and it gets a 5 out of 10. cool factor is good these are cool if you're in the know but most people aren't and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 26 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features it's well equipped but not excessively so it gets a 4 out of 10. comfort is excellent and it gets a 9 out of 10. quality is good though reliability is a bit dubious and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is normal for a big coupe and it gets a 4 out of 10. finally value and these are becoming cheaper though they're still pricey it gets a 5 out of 10 for a total daily score of 28 out of 50. added up in the dug score is 54 out of 100 which places it here against other luxury vehicles from this period the brooklyn's beach out the azure because the brooklyn's has more power and better performance but both lose to the more practical arnage still these are cool cars if you're into old-school luxury [Music] boy wow it hauls and it does so what [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

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Keywords: bentley brooklands, bentley, bentley review, bentley brooklands review, old bentley, used bentley, expensive bentley, luxury car, luxury car review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: DtG2YP3aYMA

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020