The practice of buying a deeply depreciated luxury vehicle has always been a somewhat taboo topic in the world of car enthusiasts. Somewhat unfairly – but not without justification – we’ve all had our doubts about the guy who rolls up in a car that once cost six figures that you can now buy for mere pocketchange, usually because it’s become such a nightmare to maintain and the last two owners didn’t care enough to change the hydraulic fluid in the suspension. That said, you can likely still find a lot of value in a former flagship like this 1999 Bentley Arnage listed here on craigslist for $17,999 if you can spot any signs of gross negligence before agreeing to buy.
Thanks to Barn Finds reader Tony Primo for the find. I will admit: old Bentleys have been catching my eye as of late. Not necessarily this generation, which I’ve turned my nose up at not for the reasons listed above but because it wasn’t a real Bentley, in my opinion, given it has a turbocharged BMW engine under the hood. Still, there’s no denying that an old SZ chassis sedan would be a compelling buy right now, especially since you can get into a clean Turbo R for well under $25,000. These next-generation models are trading for even less money due to the lineage shift with BMW ownership coming into play in the early 2000s.
The two-tone paint job shown here is cause for concern about some misplaced priorities; a respray and de-tinting the windows is absolutely in order for the next owner. The interior doesn’t look terrible, but there are still some tell-tale signs of not belonging to a devoted enthusiast: the cracking wood trim on the door, grubbiness on the steering wheel, wear and tear on the switchgear – nothing huge, but this car also hasn’t been put to bed every night in a heated garage. On the outside, the headlight lenses are cloudy and we already discussed the paint. Color me surprised but those wheels did come on a ’99 Arnage, as I was convinced they were swapped over from an earlier model.
One of the biggest gripes at the time it was introduced was the BMW-sourced powerplant lacked the monstrous torque that Bentleys were known for, particularly the 6.75-liter mill that powered the last of the “real” models during the ownership change. However, those engines have significant running gear costs, and are reportedly a fair bit more to look after than a model that effectively has the same powerplant as found in BMWs from the early 2000s, the M62 V8. With that in mind, an Arnage like this one could make sense for a stately cruiser with more reasonable running costs than a pre-BMW Bentley. In this case, another $5K-$7K might get you one without two-tone paint.
As Elaine said in the Seinfeld episode “Soup Nazi”, NEXT! lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOIGCyAR-0w
Your description talks about BMW taking over Bentley. While BMW did sell engines to Bentley for a short period of time, it was purely as a supplier. The company that produced Bentley and Rolls-Royce motorcars at the end of the nineties was Vickers, most famous for making hydraulic pumps and machine guns. They lacked the automotive engineering depth to continue making cars that could comply with increasingly stringent emission and safety regulations. They decided to sell off their car business in 1998. There was a bidding war between the VW group and BMW. VW won, and acquired Bentley, the factory, the inventories, and the dealer network. But they didn’t acquire the rights to make Rolls-Royce Motor Cars! That was a name belonged to the Rolls-Royce PLC (the jet engine company) who licensed it to BMW. Today Bentley is part of the VW Group, and Rolls-Royce is part of BMW.
Volkswagen Group owns Bentley, and BMW owns Rolls Royce.
Wasn’t there some kind of swap between the new owners concerning the brands? My feeble memory thinks of confusion until they finally managed to work out the details. Therefore the need for a BMW V8 instead of old reliable. I type that with irony.
The Vickers-VW-BMW-Rolls Royce story is almost worthy of a movie plot. Vickers, who owned Bentley and had a license to use the Rolls-Royce name, sold the company to VW after a bidding war between VW and BMW. VW had been assured that acquiring the rights to the RR brand would be no problem. RR Aircraft had other ideas, and sold the rights to the RR brand to BMW for a fraction of what VW paid for Bentley. The irony is that after being outsmarted by BMW, VW had to buy engines from them, because it was too late to do anything else.
CCFisher your are correct that BMW payed far less for the rights to use the Rolls-Royce name and trademarks than VW did to acquire Bentley. But, VW acquired the factory, the rights to all previous designs, the rights to make parts for all previous model Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars (which would subsequently be identified as Original Crewe parts, and they acquired the dealership agreements around the world! BMW has to design a completely new car, build a completely new factory, hire a totally new staff (with the exception of Tony Gott who opted to go with the BMW project) create determine what properties a new R-R would have, what it would look like and what properties it would have. A team of BMW’s best people were assembled and sent to England to work in a former bank building in London. They worked in secret and were guided by the question, “what would Henry Royce have done”? Clearly it worked out pretty well. I am proud to have been a part of that team here in the US.
No question VW made the best of the situation, but I’m not sure an old factory and intellectual property of limited use made it worth it. It was widely reported in the press at the time that the goal of purchasing Bentley had been to get Rolls Royce, and that VW executives were not happy about BMW’s back-door purchase.
Speaking of BMW, I always figured that they started working on what became the Phantom long before they secured the rights to Rolls Royce. That was in summer, 1998, and the Phantom debuted in early 2003. Designing a complicated, tech-laden, super-luxury car from scratch in just over four years would have been an extraordinary feat, even for BMW. It was rumored that BMW was working on a 9-series to be its flagship at the time, and that project was the basis for the 2003 RR Phantom.