Bentley Turbo R

Was browsing CL and found This, I'm curious...what's the story in these?

BTW, I'm not going to buy it. But, I love the way they look.

Whoa, $16,000?

That's about the right price. Resale on them is painful because repair costs are absurd. Nobody wants a Bentley of that age. You're spinning a roulette wheel of doom by purchasing it. You MIGHT be able to drive it for two years and have nothing to wrong and sell it for about the same money. However any serious repair is likely to cost as much as the car/reduce the value of the car to zero. That's the word on the street anyway.
I kind of want one.

It might have a tire that reads a few psi low. Of course the spec is for some rare gas imported from Jupiter, so its going to cost the price of a new Lambo to fill the tire.

What that is good for is donating the body and interior to build a kickass restomod with LSx power and an aftermarket chassis.

mazdeuce pretty much sums it up - like Rolls Royces they're spectacularly overbuilt but when things go wrong, they're more expensive to fix than a cheap Porsche and free Lotus combined. They're also pretty quick but pay tribute to Ettore Bugatti's quip about Bentley building the fastest trucks.

They're the late 80s/early 90s way of building a sofa strapped to an ICBM, with similar fuel consumption to the ICBM. I vaguely remember that there are a couple of companies in the UK that have the parts to massively improve their handling, at an ahem certain cost, but if you have to ask the price you probably don't want one of these anyway.

As I seem to like oddball vehicles that tend to get expensive quickly, I'd want one at some point...

On the upside, they can makes you look loaded moreso than any other car in the $16k range.

They might make you look loaded while draining away your last cent .

Mental image made my day! Like classic 80's Maxwell ad, but w/ me: sitting on burled walnut and conelly leather upholstered davenport, attached to ICBM.

My love of cars British & land yachts means I will own a Bentley at some point in my life. That will occur right before the sudden divorce or immediately prior to my unexpected, mysterious, painful death that only my widow witnessed.

I want one. If the prices keep going down, I might end up with one repair costs be damned.

I believe the late David E. Davis, Jr., once said that the Turbo R was the only Bentley he'd want on his side in a bar fight, so there's that.

Ive considered a red b before. This doesnt help.

I mean it's a turbo 8cyl 4 door...

I'm not 100% sure, but I think these have chain-driven window regulators. That means that you should own one. Cut a large hole in the door panel just so you can watch it go up and down. Maybe, just maybe, it'll make the noise like the portcullis of a castle going up and down....

Thats like 5k higher than the last two i saw locally.

I still want to believe that one could be grass roots maintained.

Provided you're willing to buy whatever special tools are needed, it should be possible to DIY maintain it. And that would help the cost a bit.

A lot of the value in those cars disappears once they hit a certain age. You see it with the high end BMWs and Mercedes too. At some point, it's too old for most of the rich people who originally bought them to want it, and it's too complicated, big, etc. for a lot of other people to go near it.

I also always wanted one of these. Owning a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, which is nearly the same car without the turbo and softer suspension, has permanently cured my desire for the Turbo R.

That would be the car to get if you wanted to be an Uber driver.

Knurled wrote: That would be the car to get if you wanted to be an Uber driver.

If you can get past vehicle age limits.

I really want to own one of these someday, preferably in red.

yupididit wrote: I mean it's a turbo 8cyl 4 door...

...Bentley.

"Have them bring the Bentley around."

Love these. This makes my childish desire for a 2000's Jaguar XJR look nearly sane... I also harbor dreams that you could keep one on a GRM budget by doing all the work...

I'll take this instead and put a blower on it or something.

I still want to believe that one could be grass roots maintained.

Well, i personally want to buy a 996 with the assumption that i WILL be putting an IMS bearing in it in my 2-car garage. I've also fixed a lot of 'broken' components. I'm not scared of the physical adversity of needy cars. The real scary part is needing an expensive part, or worse, needing a special tool that you know isnt anywhere near as special as the money they want for it. That just makes me mad.