This feature is from the Daily Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk

The Daily Telegraph's Andrew English climbs into Bentley's new Azure convertible, the perfect lifestyle accessory for anyone with a quarter of a million pounds to spare

I was bobbing around the Guildford Lido the other day and wondering what it would be like to be rich. Not just a bit rich, but stinking rich.

A must for those who can afford it: Bentley's stunning but expensive Azure

Wealthy enough to afford my own lido, for example, with 50 metres of crystal water and rows of azure-blue changing cubicles like a set from a Busby Berkeley musical. And a convertible motor car the size of a Routemaster bus floating rock-and-roll-style in the middle of the pool. You know, the sort of car that says in a broad Black Country burr: "I have considerably more money than yowl."

Not unlike this moment, in fact. Sitting in the softest Scandinavian leather armchair with the Catalan sun throwing its last rays across the bonnet and the warm breeze ruffling my barnet. At 60mph the big Pirellis swish along the asphalt, while the twin turbos murmur softly and Ray Charles does the Mess Around on the stereo. A couple of hundred miles under our belts and there's supper waiting in Toulouse two hours away, maybe an hour and a half if I put my foot down.

But why rush? The moment is so perfect. Big cream dials peek out of burr-walnut veneer and the needles, pointing at Eric Gill's beautiful mechanical typeface, tell me that all is well and the 21-gallon tank is brimming. There's a scent of bougainvillea in the dusty air and the empty road disappears into the evening haze. Forget Toulouse: I could be in Paris by midnight.

Welcome to Bentley World. Informed by the hedonistic lives of the 1930s Bentley Boys, this is a place where you never have to go Dutch in restaurants, never mind the fuel bills and never worry that your indolent life owes more to the obscene wealth of a modern footballer or water board chairman than it does a 21st century renaissance man.

For while other, lesser four-seat convertibles are available, the Bentley Azure is for the moment the definitive drophead statement of filthy lucre - £222,650 / $400,000 (in the UK) of it to be precise. Not that you can buy one right now, as the waiting list is a year long.

Luxurious: British wood and leather as you've never seen it before

By rights this car shouldn't really exist. Outside of the Chevrolet small-block V8, the Bentley (née Rolls-Royce) V8 is the oldest car engine still in production and its survival has been the result of the series of serendipitous events. First, in 1959, when Rolls-Royce engineers needed a narrow V8 to replace the straight-six in the S-type Continental, they chose more efficient-burning wedge-shaped combustion chambers rather than the wider (and dirtier) hemispherical shapes, which have been virtually outlawed by modern exhaust emissions legislation. Second, in a superb display of belt-and-braces engineering, former Rolls-Royce/Bentley boss Graham Morris and his team saw fit to make sure the old V8 would still fit under the bonnet of the BMW-engined Arnage, so when the world turned its back on the rev-happy BMW motor, the V8 was pressed back into service. Then, when Volkswagen finally took charge of the Crewe car-maker, its boss Ferdinand Piech insisted that his team at Bentley re-engineer the old V8 to fit into the 1998 Arnage.

In fact the last original 1959 engine parts have recently been changed, as their chromium coatings are no longer legal. In 47 years the old R-R/Bentley V8 has had a 150 per cent increase in power and torque (and Bentley's chief engineer Ulrich Eichhorn assures me that there is more to come), its fuel consumption has been decreased by 40 per cent and the exhaust emissions have fallen by 99.5 per cent. Today's Azure engine would happily idle on the unburnt hydrocarbons emitted by the 1959 original.

This is a wind-in-the-hair year for Bentley, which is also launching a drophead two-plus-two version of its Continental GT this autumn. The Azure, however, is a proper four-seater, replacing the old model that sold some 1,300 examples between its launch in 1995 and its demise in 2002, when Bentley sequestered the production line for the cheaper but wildly profitable Continental GT. In fact used examples of the old Azure are now much sought after.

Bigger, faster and heavier, but much more commodious than the old Azure, the new model has considerable under-body strengthening including twin carbon-fibre cruciforms to prevent its massive body from twisting, racking and vibrating, something the old model did in abundance. The 7ft 6in long hood comes from German specialist Edscha and it's a miracle of modern engineering.

'Pedestrians stop and stare, car drivers crane their necks and you feel like royalty'

Its electronic furling takes 25 seconds at up to 20mph, when frankly the Azure looks like a galleon setting sail on the evening tide. Stretched over and under the seven hood sticks are a three-layer outer fabric augmented by an insulating inner lining and a fully upholstered head-lining with a glass rear window - and a reading light. There's ne'er a ripple or flap even at motorway speeds and the loudest noise come from the tyres, or the engine if you're pressing on.

Most impressive of all, though, is the ride: there are magic carpets harsher than this. The hydraulic damping control has three main modes, with a two-position manual selector that simply alters the thresholds at which the different modes come into play to give the ride a sporting or comfort bias.

In the curved back seat, passengers sit high in a vast expanse of smart rear decking and the aerodynamics throw most of the turbulence over their heads. Pedestrians stop and stare, car drivers crane their necks and you feel like royalty, or a minor despot. The body gently follows the road's undulations while the exhausts burble; it's like being in a commodious land yacht. There is plenty of room, even with the hood up, and our only criticism is the lack of a fold-down centre armrest, which would support rear passengers leaning forward to talk to those in front. There is an optional fixed Mulliner armrest, but you know that it will cost as much as a baby ocelot and there are times when even the super-rich forget they are super and rich and want a job done properly in the first place without paying extra to have it put right.

It's the same story with the condensation that drips off the facia's soft chromium eyeball air-vents like dank seaweed dripping in a tidal cave. Bentley engineers said this was due to the exceptional Spanish humidity, that it would never happen in drier, hotter places and that, anyway, the dashboard veneers are sealed against the ingress of moisture. This will be of little comfort to owners who live in the more humid parts of Spain. Besides, every year my sailing dinghy is sealed against the elements with the finest coatings known to man and by the end of the season it looks as though it's been attacked with Nitromors.

Dynamically, you need to remember this is a big car that weighs 2.65 tons. It is remarkably agile for its size, but a Bentley needs a particular style of driving. You can't carry excess speed into corners and sort it out half way through like you can in a good hot hatchback. If you do that the Azure will simply understeer politely until the stability control sorts things out, or you disappear into the scenery - probably Andorra from here. The trick is to wait until the corner opens out then use the engine's humungous grunt to roar through the rest of the bend and waft on to the next straight. The rear coachwork sits down, the newly re-instituted Bentley mascot (very handsome it is, too) lifts and toasts the gods of sybaritic life and the big exhausts waffle the air in your wake.

Spacious: the Azure is a proper four-seater

That said, the Azure grips prodigiously and the damping control is impressive. For such a comfortable car, the body roll is kept to a minimum and there is never even a suspicion of suspension float over crests. The steering is particularly well judged, with a constant weight and precise response, particularly just off the dead-ahead position. You can drive this big convertible very fast indeed, but the old GM 400 four-speed automatic gearbox is clunky and, despite the engine's momentous torque, it occasionally lacks the right gear for the corner and its ratio swaps are slurred into imprecision.

Without accurate engine braking, the 13.7in ventilated front disc brakes have a lot of work to do. They took all we could throw at them without fade, but I would have preferred a more instant response to the pedal. The car stops quickly; you just don't get the feeling it will when you first touch the pedal.

In the last few weeks we've been to two Volkswagen-owned companies, Lamborghini and Bentley, both thriving and making money. When you look at the mess that Ford has made of Jaguar, or General Motors of Saab, it's hard not to think of VW's tenure as a model for big-company ownership of small, specialist car makers. In Bentley's case there has been a deep respect for what went before and engineers have been given the time and the money to intimately understand what makes the cars tick. The result has been a series of new models that look, perform, ride and handle like proper Bentleys but with a new-found precision and accuracy.

And while most of us will never drive a Bentley, this is also a company that we can feel proud of, with 550 engineers, 4,000 employees and an apprenticeship scheme that young people are falling over themselves to join. It's a British success story and also a poke in the eye for companies such as Peugeot and Vauxhall which don't seem to be able to pack their bags quickly enough.

Actually I think I'd save my personal lido the indignity of a floating Bentley; it's just too good-looking and enjoyable to drive. Life is too short to wear bad shoes and if you've got a quarter of a million to burn, it's much too short not to have a Bentley Azure. British wood and leather as you've never seen it before. The winged emblem makes a welcome returnBigger, faster and heavier than its predecessor, yet much more commodious, the new Bentley Azure is the definitive drophead statement of sybaritic luxury. For those who can afford it, life's simply too short not to own onedominic fraser

Price/availability: £222,650. On sale now with the first deliveries in mid-August; one-year waiting list.

Engine/transmission: 6,761cc petrol, all-aluminium twin-turbo 90-degree V8 with single camshaft in block and two valves per cylinder; 450bhp at 4,100rpm and 645lb ft of torque at 3,250rpm. Four-speed automatic gearbox, rear-wheel drive.

Performance: top speed 168mph, 0-60mph in 5.9sec, EU Urban fuel consumption 9.2mpg, CO2 emissions 495g/km.

We like: The style, the space and the pace. It's also probably Bentley's best-riding car.

We don't like: The dashboard condensation, the lack of a rear armrest, the imprecise four-speed autobox and the rather small boot. To be honest, we would overlook all these things if Bentley gave us an indefinite loan of one.

Alternatives: DaimlerChrysler Maybach 57S, from £293,135. Rolls-Royce convertible, to be launched in 2007, price TBA.

Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.