Bentley Arnage T
Why 5.8: The sporting Arnage: 450 bhp and 875 Nm from an engine architecture first sold in 1959, hauling 2.6 tonnes to a limited 168 mph. Depreciation took it from around $225,000 to under $50,000, which is why the people who own one now are enthusiasts rather than executives.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The 6.75 L-series dates to 1959, and the T's freer exhaust lets more of that long-stroke bass out than any other Arnage managed — a low, offbeat pushrod thrum nothing built since reproduces. But it is geared for 645 lb ft rather than revs, stops at 4,500 rpm, and Crewe's insulation keeps it a room away.
8-cylinder · turbocharged · 4,500 rpm redline · rated 5.9 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €207k (2002) → €57k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
ISOFIX was spreading through these years rather than fitted across the board — whether a given car has rear anchors depends on its year and market.
Children were expected in the back. Front-passenger ISOFIX effectively didn't exist in this era, and airbag deactivation was patchy — treat the front seat as a no unless a specific car proves otherwise.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The 6.75-litre L-series V8 is the whole point. Designed in the fifties, pushrod-operated, hand-assembled at Crewe, and by the Arnage T's arrival fitted with twin turbochargers, a new engine-management system and enough revision to make 450 bhp and 645 lb ft — the most torque of any production car in the world when it launched. It went through a General Motors four-speed automatic until a six-speed ZF arrived for 2007, which tells you how little of this car was about specification-sheet modernity and how much about mass moved effortlessly. Then the market did what it does to complicated British flagships. An Arnage T that cost the price of a house in 2002 could be bought for around $45,000 by the mid-2010s, and that price collapse changed the owner completely: out went the corporate lease, in came people who wanted a hand-built twin-turbo Bentley and had worked out that the purchase price is the cheap part. They drive them, carefully, budgeting for the servicing. Values have begun firming as the last-of-the-line story takes hold, but nothing here resembles speculation — this is the highest Index score in the batch because an Arnage T is bought to be used and everybody buying one knows exactly what it will cost them.