The Bentley Arnage is a full-size high-performance luxury car manufactured by Bentley Motors in Crewe, England, from 1998 to 2009. The Arnage and its Rolls-Royce-branded sibling, the Silver Seraph, were introduced in the spring of 1998. They were the first entirely new designs for the two marques since 1980.
The Arnage was powered by a BMW M62 V8 engine, with Cosworth-engineered twin-turbo installation, and the Seraph employed a BMW M73 V12 engine. In September 2008, Bentley announced that production of the model would end in 2009.
The revised version of the car was launched as the Arnage Red Label in October 1999. At the same time, but without fanfare, Bentley made several minor modifications to the original BMW engined cars, and designated them as the "Arnage Green Label" for the 2000 model year. The most important modifications, to both Red and Green Label cars, gave them stiffer body shells, and larger wheels and brakes. Both the stiffer body shells and the larger brakes were necessitated by the extra heft of the large old British engine. Despite the larger brakes, braking performance worsened with the extra weight of the 6.75 engine. The braking performance of the 1999 Green Label from 113–0 km/h was 172 feet (52 m) while the later Arnage T's performance was 182 feet (55 m) from the same speed.
In 2001, the Arnage LWB (renamed the RL from MY2003), a long-wheelbase model (250 mm (9.8 in) longer than the Arnage), was launched. The extra length is added to the car at both its front and rear doors and its C-pillar to maintain its proportions. With the standard Arnage model, the rear wheel wells butt up against the rear door frames, but with the LWB & RL, they are a few inches further back. The overall effect is a larger rear area inside the car. This style of saloon stretch is sometimes called "double-cut" in the United States, due to the two main points where the car is extended. (Jankel and Andy Hotton Associates, for example, are two aftermarket coachbuilders especially known for this style.) Available only as a bespoke ("Mulliner") model, each LWB & RL is customised to the desires of the buyer.
The LWB, however, was also the first of a new series of Arnages which would finally cure the Bentley Arnage of the reliability and performance deficiencies experienced following its forced deprivation of the modern BMW engines it was designed to use. The RL would also present a credible challenge to BMW's attempts to revive the Rolls-Royce brand with its planned new model, the Phantom.