This big Bentley spurs auto envy
With 616 hp under the hood, land yacht flies to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds
Once ensconced in the sway of Bentley’s new Flying Spur’s hedonistic leather, one transformed into a giddy seven-year-old.
For us gearheads, compensation can come in many forms, especially if you have, say, something like a Bentley Flying Spur at your disposal for a long weekend. You could, for instance, spend the entire weekend dressed in your tattiest motorcycle jacket and worn Doc Martens. . Of course, this being the digital age, technology allows that lording over those lesser can now be accomplished on a larger, more efficient scale. A simple snap of the iPhone 5 to your Twitter feed and you’re sending “Me and my Bentley #FlyingSpur #Breitlingtimekeeper #EatYourHeartOut” to millions — OK hundreds — of followers.
Whatever your choice of expression, no one drives a big black land yacht with tinted windows and brightly polished rims the size of manhole covers trying not to get noticed.
The big Bentley is incredibly serene. One doesn’t hear — or feel — much of the road in the 2,475-kilogram Flying Spur. Imagine flying along on a cloud, over the potholes that Toronto calls roads.
Oddly, Bentley stuffed the higher horse power Continental GT Speed version of its 6.0-litre W12 into the Flying Spur this year. One doesn’t usually up the horsepower of a car by 64 while softening suspension by some 20 per cent.
But somehow it all works. One quick spurt of all 616 horses sifting seamlessly through seven gears — 100 kilometres an hour takes but 4.5 seconds — is all it took to engender a lascivious smile.
The Bentley fairly bristles with the niceties of wealth: supple leather adorning pretty much everything in the cabin, chrome buttonry of the old school, a Breitling chronometer at the centre of the dashboard.
The navigation system is positively simple to use. Ditto for Bluetoothing your cellphone. And mine was but the basest of Bentleys with virtually no options.
Not everything is perfect with the Bentley. I suspect Volkswagen’s now aging W12 — an odd pairing of two of VW’s VR6 narrow-angle V6s — may be reaching the limits of its development.
When calling on all 616 of those turbocharged horses, for instance, one can hear just the faintest of grumblings from the powertrain. You might be in trouble if one of those who scorn you is a powertrain engineer.
I suspect Bentley will be placing less emphasis on its top-line W12 in the future. It’s a heavy beast, and faced with the penalties levied on those profligate in their consumption, even Bentley will have to sell more cars with fewer cylinders and less displacement.
The good news is the alternative is a tweaked version of Audi’s supremely refined twin-turbocharged V8; it’s lighter, powerful and sufficiently more frugal to prove politically correct. Even those who might ostensibly rule occasionally have to bow to the power of the masses.