Once a year, a flock of well-heeled car geeks descend upon Monterey for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance weekend and the historic racing around the Laguna Seca circuit. On these occasions, upmarket car companies like to advertise their wares. Porsche, for example, brought its new four-door Panamera along. But the scene-stealer this time has been the 2011 Bentley Mulsanne.

This is an all-new model on its own platform and will take over from the soon-to-be-discontinued Arnage as Bentley’s flagship vehicle. Not much is known about the engine outside of the Crewe, England factory apart from the fact that it’s a V8 (supercharged, turbocharged? Surely one of the two), but its presence is unmistakable, even down to those LEDs encircling the main headlights. And the word is that it takes 40 man-hours to create the leather-and-wood-resplendent interior.

The Mulsanne gets another airing at the Frankfurt Motor Show this fall before going into production and hitting the showrooms in mid-2010. Price? Again, no official statement, but the thick end of $300,000 seems to be the best guesstimate and Bentley expects to shift around 700 a year. Optimism is a wonderful thing.