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Bentley designers show off how custom the custom coachbuilt Bentley Mulliner Bacalar can be

One of the draws of the Bentley Mulliner Bacalar, besides its gorgeous two-seat roadster style, is that it's a unique custom coachbuilt car. The company touts the fact that not a single piece of the exterior is shared with another Bentley. It will always be particularly rare, too, since only 12 will be built. But the unique, custom nature of the car extends beyond that to giving customers nearly free rein with interior components and colors. To show this off, Bentley designers created six gorgeous example models that have us wishing the company would make a few more than 12 Bacalars. Speaking broadly, customers will get to choose unique exterior paint, but the interior is perhaps the most interesting, as choices will include bespoke fabrics, piping, stitching and dash materials. The first of these shown in the gallery is one of our favorites, named Clerkenwell. It features two shades of green leather, and some contrasting green tweed fabric on the seats and the dash, and it's matched with huge swaths of a light wood veneer that stretches from the dash to the doors. The Greenwich interior that follows is also eye-catching with its oxblood leather, gray tweed, and two kinds of 5,000-year-old Riverwood veneer, part of it left as open pore, and the other part given a gloss finish. The other trims in order of appearance are Fulton, Menlo, Brickell, and Randwick. These show additional variations on leather color, and some of them swap the wood veneer for carbon fiber, or the tweed for Alcantara. And of course, all six of these cars get their own corresponding paint colors. Let us know in the comments which ones you like the best, and here's hoping Bacalar buyers get really creative with their cars. Related Video:      

Bentley already considering smaller crossover

Bentley has yet to reveal (let alone start selling) its upcoming new SUV, but the company is already reported to be considering a smaller model to follow in that new model's footsteps. This according to Autocar, in speaking with Bentley CEO Wolfgang Durheimer at the announcement of the company's record sales results for 2014. Prior to originally taking the helm at Bentley and Bugatti, Durheimer served as head of R&D at Porsche, which recently launched the Macan crossover to join the larger Cayenne. Tipped to be called the Bentayga, the forthcoming Bentley crossover will share its platform with the next generation of its sister company's crossover, whose success Bentley aims to emulate. The Bentayga (or whatever it's ultimately called) will be vital in helping Bentley achieve its sales target of 20,000 units per year by 2020. The storied British marque topped 11,000 units for the first time in 2014, and the new SUV will be a vital component in boosting those figures. Bentley says it has already received 4,000 "expressions of interest" for the crossover before it's even unveiled, suggesting that it could exceed earlier sales projections of 3,000 units per year. But even then, the big crossover wouldn't be enough to get Bentley to its target. That's why it's already considering the smaller crossover, among other options including a four-door coupe, a two-door sports car and a Mulsanne-based convertible. The company is also investing heavily in infrastructure and production capacity to ensure its supply can meet the demand it is working to build up.

Bentley planning new Le Mans prototype for LMP2 class

Word has it that Bentley is planning a new Le Mans prototype racer. Speaking with Bentley chief Wolfgang Durheimer, Autocar reports that a new LMP2 project is underway at Crewe. The program would be run in-house instead of outsourced to a partner racing team. But while the prototype would likely use the company's 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, the chassis by necessity would have to be outsourced: the three major sanctioning bodies recently got together to approve Dallara, Oreca, Riley-Multimatic, and Onroak exclusively to supply LMP2 chassis, so Bentley would have to base its design around one of theirs. The British automaker might have a number of reasons for restricting itself to the LMP2 class. Chief among them is likely the presence of both Porsche and Audi in the top-tier LMP1 category, and parent company Volkswagen's likely reluctance to send another one of its brands into the same fight. Another is budget: developing and fielding a competitive LMP1 program can be as costly as running an F1 team, whereas the prospect of sourcing and adapting an LMP2 chassis from an approved supplier would cost Bentley far less. But another factor not to be discounted is that Bentley may be choosing its battles carefully. Where the LMP1 prototypes are constricted largely to Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship of which it is part, there are several series that top out at LMP2 – most notable the IMSA SportsCar Championship where Bentley is tipped to focus first, but also in the European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series. In fact [SPOILER ALERT] an LMP2 entry just won the 24 Hours of Daytona for the first time, beating out the Daytona Prototypes against which they compete. Those are bragging rights that Bentley could be keen to capture, and if it plays its cards right, it could sit out the LMP2 class at Le Mans and in the WEC altogether, rather than compete for second-tier victory behind its big brothers in LMP1. That would make this program radically different from the last time Bentley built a Le Mans prototype. In the early 2000s, Bentley fielded successive versions of the Speed 8 (pictured above) with a little help from Audi, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 2003. The company then shut down the program, only to return to racing with the Continental GT3, developed with longtime Ford rally partner M-Sport and offered to privateer teams.