Bentley gave us an up-close and personal look at its customization process—and now it will make the car we specified and let us drive it.
We’ve all been there. Bored at work, trying to kill a few hours before you get to go home, you pull up a car customization site to mess around on when your boss isn’t looking (hi, Erik!). But if you’re truly serious about customizing a car, you don’t do it on something as plebian as a screen. Ew. No, instead, you meet with a specialist in person. Most high-end automotive brands offer services like these, and for today’s story, Bentley invited us to meet with one of its Mulliner team members to see firsthand what a truly bespoke customization experience is like.
Going to Crewe, where Bentley is headquartered in the U.K., wasn’t an option, so it came to us. And it came packing cases full of exterior color swatches, interior veneer samples, and strips of leather upholstery in nearly every color you can think of. It felt a little bit like being unleashed in a candy shop, except at the end you get a car instead of a bag of jellybeans.
On its website, Bentley boasts a baseline of 101 exterior colors, though you can expand this list to include any color from the luxury marque’s past, as well as opt for bespoke paint-matched hues. Interior leather choices offer 22 primary colors, 11 secondary shades, six accent colors, and various contrast stitching and piping options. There are eight wood veneer options with multiple finishes, which can also be paint-matched to any interior leather or exterior paint color. There are, according to Bentley, “10s of billions” of combinations—and this is all before Mulliner gets involved.
See, Mulliner is who you call when a so-called off-the-rack Bentley won’t cut it. This is the team that works with you if you want, oh, a personalized 278,566-stitch motif hand-crafted across the upper seat backs and door panels. (Yes, it’s actually happened before.) The sky’s the limit as long as the car passes the appropriate safety and materials tests.
If you occupy this stratosphere, you lucky dog, Bentley will introduce you to someone like Georgia Gough, a Mulliner bespoke design consultant and one with a handy background in textiles. Gough brought her computer, which runs a super-advanced version of a Bentley customization tool. She can change minute details down to the type of stitching on the steering wheel.
After selecting a 2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed as the base car, Gough suggested we start from the outside in: Decide on an exterior color. I currently find myself going through a plum-purple period, so Tanzanite Purple is where we went. Black wheels, grille, wing mirror caps, and debadged—that part was easy.
The Continental GT Speed’s interior is where things became difficult. I love the look of purple with white leather, but experience tells me it’s impossible to keep clean. What if we did Tanzanite Purple on Tanzanite Purple, though? It sounded good in concept, but upon seeing it on Gough’s screen, I had second thoughts. It was too much, like a car from the Wonka factory. Time to throw everything out and start over.
I asked Gough for a pale pink, and she followed up with Pink Amethyst, which is a beautiful blushy pink. This really popped with the black detailing, especially with the black pinstripe on the body and Pink Amethyst pinstripes on the black mirror caps.
Looking through the wood veneers armed with the knowledge I now possess about them all, I beelined for a light, sand-colored wood. I dislike dark woods; they make me think of stuffy old-fashioned studies. Open-Pore Olive Ash Veneer won, and wanting to continue the beachy theme, I chose Camel (tan) as the main leather color with Beluga (black) as the contrasting color. As a nod to the pink exterior, I put Orchid pink accent leathers on the steering wheel’s outer portion and the gear lever.
This whole process took nearly two hours, and I could have sat in that room with Gough all day. I like the car I built, and I’ll die on the Pink Amethyst and Olive Ash veneer hills, but if I had had more time, I’d like to explore how a grayish blue would do for the primary leather color. After seeing the final renders, the Camel and Olive Ash are a little too close in tone.
But what struck me most about the process is how overwhelming the whole thing can be. There are option trees for things you don’t even realize can be optioned, like whether you want “Bentley” or “Speed” embossed into your headrests and what color the thread ought to be. Anyone who’s ever spent hours building a character in Fallout 4 will understand.
The full build details:
Exterior Proposal
Mainstream Specification:
- 22-inch Swept Spoke Wheel Black Painted with Self Levelling Wheel Badge by Mulliner
- Standard Brakes with Black Painted Calipers
- Speed Specification
- Continental Blackline Specification
- Without Bentley Boot Lettering
- Heated Windshield
- Touring Specification
- Animated Welcome Lamps
Mulliner Specification:
- Pink Amethyst Exterior Paint
- Beluga Pinstripe to Body Kit
- Beluga (Solid) Painted Mirror Caps and Stalks
- Pink Amethyst Painted Pinstripe to Mirror Caps
Interior Proposal
Mainstream Specification:
- Heated, Duo-Tone, Hide-Trimmed 3-Spoke Steering Wheel.
- Leather Specification
- Front Seat Comfort Specification
- Dark Chrome Interior Brightware Specification
- Mood Lighting Specification
- Bentley Rotating Display
- Deep Pile Overmats
- Naim for Bentley
- Seatbelts to Match Main Hide
Mulliner Specification:
- Bespoke Interior Color Split
o Beluga Secondary Hide
o Camel Main Hide
o Orchid Accent Hide (including Steering Wheel Outer, Gear Lever, Door Bin Lowers and Center Console Packet Lowers
- Stratos Hide to Steering Wheel Accent Tab Only
- Open-Pore Olive Ash Veneer to All Veneered Surfaces
- Contrast Speed Emblems in Orchid
- Contrast Stitching to Standard Areas (Excluding Seats, Front and Rear Center Console Armrest)
o Contrast Orchid Single Stitch to Toproll Lower, Door Speed Accent Swoosh, Center Console Speed Accent Swoosh, Rear Quarters Speed Accent Swoosh, and Ski Hatch Accent Panel
o Blind Camel Stitching on Camel Hide
- Contrast Stitching to IP Wings and Door Trumpet Panels in Stratos
- Contrast Stitching to Seat Areas and Rear Center Console in Stratos
o Additional Contrast Stitching to Seat Outer Bolsters in Orchid on Beluga Hide
- Contrast Honeycomb Style Stitching to Steering Wheel in Orchid
- Deep Pile Overmats with Beluga Binding and Orchid Stitching
- Gloss Black Speed Treadplates
And the Price Is?
Now we come to how much. On top of the 2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed’s $353,595 MSRP, we added $48,345 worth of bespoke options. So total MSRP for this pink vision comes to $401,640. Yes, my eyes also went big the first time I saw the price. Apparently, I have expensive taste. But if you’ve followed my work for all these past years, perhaps you knew that already.
But wait, there’s more.
Today’s appointment with Mulliner and Gough wasn’t just for S’s and G’s. In the spirit of the utmost authentic experience, Bentley said it will send my specifications to Crewe and do its best to have a Continental GT Speed with this exact spec built as a media vehicle, which it will then ship back here for me to spend time with after its completion in six to eight months. Don’t worry—Bentley knows I have zero intention of purchasing this car from it, much less having the ability to do so. What’ll likely happen is it will be sold after it does its time in the media fleet, and whoever buys it gets to go home with the Kristen Lee Special.
