Big, brash, British – all words that could only be ascribed to Bentley, ‘the fastest lorry in the world’, as penned by Ettore Bugatti. The ultimate expression of the pre-Volkswagen Bentley ethos must the Brooklands coupe –painstakingly assembled by hand in limited numbers.

Limited is not just hyperbole either: a mere 550 cars left the Crewe factory between 2008 and 2011. A true grand tourer, the Brooklands was the last of the truly old-school Crewe cars. While its modern Continental GT successor was powered by an not-inconsequential twin-turbo W12, the stately Brooklands still received motive power from the tried-and-true 6.75-litre twin-turbo V8, an engine with five decades of heritage.

The power figures of this motor – which can drew a proud line all the way back to 1959 – are anything but anodyne: 523bhp and 774 lb ft of torque are still respectable figures today – but keep in mind, those figures are achieved at a mere 3,200rpm. As a result, expect truly epic point-and-shoot performance for something so vast. 100kph arrives in a cloud of smoke in five seconds, and the quarter mile in a scarcely-believable 13.3 seconds. To put these numbers into perspective – there are slower Porsches. And not SUVs, either.

Our Gulf-spec example, owned by a VIP in Kuwait, has covered little over 10,000km on its odometer and comes in a luscious dark aubergine over a beige leather.