Bacalar Inspires Bespoke Luxury Aircraft With Flexjet

Flexjet owner Kenn Ricci has been a Bentley customer for more than a decade. His experience with the brand, which includes multiple co-created cars, led him to consider how bespoke personalisation could be applied to his own industry. Mr Ricci has now worked together with members of Mulliner’s in-house design team on ‘The Bacalar Project’, creating two new aircraft inspired by one of the rarest two-door Bentleys of the modern era, his own Bentley Bacalar.

The Bacalar signifies Mulliner’s return to coachbuilding, with a collection of 12 highly individualised cars being carefully handcrafted by Mulliner’s team of artisans in Crewe. Reflecting the same attention to detail and exceptional design, Flexjet’s new Gulfstream G650 private jet is paired with a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, both personalised to reflect the unique specification of the Bacalar.

The rare and distinctive paint colour option of Julep, chosen by Mr Ricci for his Bacalar, inspired a unique change to the Flexjet livery in chameleon paint – normally a red-gold chameleon – but for this pair of aircraft a silver-green chameleon paint has been used for the key accents.

Inside, the copperhead shape and basket weave stitching on the Linen and Beluga leather trimmed seats of the coachbuilt Bacalar inspired the custom seats in the Gulfstream G650 and those in the Sikorsky S-76.

The 5,000-year-old reclaimed riverwood that forms the handcrafted veneer of the Bacalar inspired the matching wood veneer species used in both aircraft. Satin Bacalar Bronze fittings adorn the cabins, as well as unique diamond-carved carpet.

Flexjet offers bespoke luxury travel experiences, yet are not the only ones to recognise the individuality that bespoke personalisation can bring. Since 2020, the percentage of customer specifying Bentleys with specific Mulliner features has continued to grow at an almost exponential rate. The demand for Mulliner special paint finishes has more than doubled; and the number of Mulliner personal commissions, bringing a truly individual vision to life by the Mulliner team, has tripled.

While Mr Ricci’s car is given its finishing touches, the first and original Bacalar – the development car known as Car Zero – was on-hand to meet the Gulfstream G650 at Farnborough Airport yesterday, ahead of a flight to New York. Meanwhile, the S-76 made its public debut at The Quail, part of Monterey Car Week, in August this year.

Uniquely designed details and features in the Bacalar’s cabin emphasise the coachbuilt character of the car, with an almost infinite number of ways for customers to express their personal taste and commission a unique interior. From the use of precious inlays, unique finishes to the driver controls, to the 148,199 individual stitches needed to embroider the unique Bacalar quilt on each seat - the specification of every Bentley is a voyage of discovery, with even a ‘standard’ model being configurable in literally billions of ways.

The process of designing a Mulliner goes even further – with infinite combinations of materials, colours and finishes. The exquisite grand tourers that result are only bounded by the laws of the land and the imagination of the customer.

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