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Bentley courting Maybach celebs with letter-writing campaign

When Daimler let slip that Maybach was on the chopping block, the German automaker reportedly insisted that ultra-luxury editions of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class would replace the doomed marque. We're all for a smattering of low volume, seriously pricey S-Class variants, but will the richest and most influential Maybach buyers feel the same way?
Automotive News reports that Bentley is betting that stars like Jay-Z and Samuel L. Jackson will want more than a gussied-up Benz, and the luxury car make is sending out olive branches in the form of a letter campaign. The premium Volkswagen brand is asking the high-rollers to step into a Bentley Mulsanne or perhaps a top-shelf Continental GT. To help persuade VIPs to switch to Bentley, the automaker is inviting select Maybach owners to tour its Crewe, England home.
Given the fact that many typical soccer moms and dads can afford an ML-Class, we can see why some movie stars and sultans would want to steer clear of the Three-Pointed Star. But is Bentley really going to gain much by wooing the 200 annual Maybach buyers? If a few more rap stars roll in a Bentley in their next music video, then the answer would appear to be yes.

All-electric Bentley 6e concept | Autoblog Minute

Bentley debuted the all-electric EXP 6e 12 Speed 6e Concept at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show. Bentley Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.