So, so many things about Project Bentley spring to mind....made worse by the fact that this wasn't a cheap car when built by any stretch - so why did R-R/Bentley cheap out???
Take the electric windows. On earlier cars (Shadow 1s, T1s and back) these moved at a speed that can actually be measured. With the second series Shadow/T and later cars, they cheaped out on the system. Thin gauge wire so you can't get enough power to the motors (and it breaks very easily as well), they took the relays out of the design and changed the motors from proper dual-field direction control ones to ones where it just reverses the polarity to change between down and up. This was apparently to save weight. Weight saving measures, on a car this big? Really? Rubbish, it was about saving a few quid on each car sold. Fortunately,
the car can be modified, and I shall be doing this next year.
Oh, and then there's the infamous rear window demist. Not one person alive today actually knows how it works. I have this theory that the design job was handed to a work experience boy who left after designing it and didn't document anything. Or maybe it was an old-timer at the factory who died after completing the job. At any rate, there isn't a switch for it like a sensible car would employ. It seems to tie into the air-con controls, but involves a timer, several relays which don't appear on the wiring diagrams, the cabin and outside temperature sensors, and probably half a dozen other things that I haven't even found yet. Why? Why would you do that, R-R/Bentley? Why do you hate your customers so much?
Another curious decision involved the seat electrics. Now, call me old fashioned but I think if I was designing in electric adjustment with a memory, I wouldn't make it so that if the (cheap, crap) battery that holds the memory in the ECU dies then the seat can't be moved. At all. I would probably keep the memory unit out of that main circuit, to be honest. There's no need for it to be tied in the way it is. Best part? When that battery inevitably dies, it leaks fluid all over the board in the ECU, and buggers it up completely. Cue a +£300 bill for a replacement one, and the dismantling of the seat to change it over. And there's an even better punchline to that one of course - since you can't move the seat until the new box is in, you'd better hope that when it died the seat was in a position that allows you to actually dismantle it without removing the centre console!
The rear suspension is my current gripe (actually a long term gripe, but since it's broken right now it's right at the forefront of my vitriol). R-R employed self-levelling at the rear of the car, operated by hydraulic struts that act as the shock absorbers as well. These are pressurised by an engine-driven pump. Now, the way they designed this was to buy a license for the rather excellent Citroen hydraulic setup. When they got this design back to the factory, they took all the good bits....and threw them in a skip. They then bodged together what was left, threw it on the cars and hoped for the best. What you're left with is a system that has 16 (!) bleed points, traps air like nothing else on this Earth, leaks hydraulic oil everywhere, isn't all that special for ride comfort, or handling, or even keeping the back of the car level to be honest, and is a wallet-draining nightmare of epic proportions when it inevitably goes wrong. Those struts, that are basically just fancy shock aborbers? More than £600. Each. For two pins, I'd rip the hydraulics all the way out and convert to standard Koni or Bilstein shocks....
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