Test Drive: BENTLEY Continental Flying Spur Speed - 2009 - "New Cars Collection"

Bentley Motors Limited is one of the very few remaining epitomes of epic Britishness on wheels, and the Crewe-based company just turned 90 since its name was registered in January. Sadly, we weren't present at the festivities with a birthday cake and we didn't take any shots at the pinata either. On the other hand, we managed to persuade the current "Bentley Boys" to lend us a Flying Spur for the weekend and see how the 90-year old geezers are holding up.

Well, it turns up they're holding pretty well, considering the level of craftsmanship per square inch we could find in our test car. Oh, we should mention the fact that we didn't get to drive any "ordinary" Flying Spur sedan, as instead we had the chance to get accustomed with a model sporting a name almost as long as Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. OK, we kid, it's not that long: it's the Bentley Continental Flying Spur Speed. If we could summarize this absolute behemoth of a car in only three parts, it would consist of sheer luxury, overwhelming comfort and devastating power.

As some you probably know, the Continental Flying Spur Speed is a British car with some teutonic roots under its majestic body shell. Built on Volkswagen's D-platform, it shares more than a bolt or two with the almost-equally impressive but not-very-originally-named Volkswagen Phaeton and also its aluminium'r'us brother, the Audi A8. We must also not forget about its two-door siblings, with the bulgy Continental GT and the topless Continental GTC sharing a little more than a common platform with our test car.

No, this isn't just a longer, more powerful and MUCH more expensive Volkswagen Phaeton. This is just the kind of car that you'd expect an oil sheik to drive on the highway linking Abu Dhabi and Dubai, or an eccentric British lord trying to recreate the famous Woolf Barnato versus "Le Train Bleu" race. Which brings us to our very own Sir May B. Bach, on whose secret premises we did some of the photo-shooting of our test car. You can read more about what he said about the car on his own designated column later on.

There are very few vehicles out there that can greet the passer-by with a more potent stance than the Continental Flying Spur Speed. Even when looked upon from the distance, this car manages to capture the attention of just about any by-stander. It's wide, high and most of all long, so it can enter your line of sight even if you don't necessarily want it to. It's not exactly easy to tell the differences between the regular Continental Flying Spur and the Speed model if you're not that good with observing details though.

Sir May B. Bach's Opinion

At last, you finally test a car that is mildly to my liking. Ahem... Bentley Continental Flying Spur Speed. What more could you want from the... ahem... “Flying B” brand? An Arnage or a Brooklands coupe, of course. Those aren't as faux-Bentley as this one. Twelve cylinders in a “W” pattern? Beautified Volkswagen key? You MUST be... ahem... joking. This is as British as my gardener. His first name is Adebamgbe, by the way.
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The interior of this car is pretty much the embodiment of British luxury and opulence, refraining no expense when it comes to treating all your five senses. Everything is practically drenched in soft leather, with no less than eleven hides covering the seats from top to bottom, the dashboard, the three-spoke steering wheel, all pillars and the ceiling. Without any desire to make fun of this possible situation, any pure Hindu who'd enter a Bentley by accident would probably succumb with crocodile tears at the amount of sacred animals slaughtered to make this interior as luxurious and as lavish as this.

Lou Cheeka's Opinion

Oh... my... God! What are you trying to do to me? Didn't I mention I am now converted to Hinduism and an avid vegan? Hey, just kidding. I'm actually trying to score with a model chick from Mumbay and I thought that would help. Either way, there's a lot of dead animal skin inside this Bentley. I wonder if she would mind if I invited her for a stroll on Bollywood Houlevard in this, assuming she's also a cow worshiper like her family back home.
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Given the fact that the Continental Flying Spur Speed measures a colossal length of 5290 millimeters (208.3 inches) and a truck-like width of 2118 millimeters (83.4 inches), trying to park this behemoth in the city should prove to be as discouraging as entering a knife-fight in the hood while being equipped with a nail clipper. Fortunately, our test car was equipped with an army of parking sensors both in the front and in the rear and a more-than-helpful rear parking camera. Even so, care should be taken whenever trying to squeeze in smaller parking spaces or when cruising one-way streets crammed with parked cars on each side.

The overall visibility is medium to poor, considering the long and sloping rear overhang, the diminutive sized streamline mirrors and the thickness of all the car's pillars. On the plus side, the driver seat can be configured to elevate you to almost an SUV-like height, while the suspension also has two height settings. This can especially help you if mother nature has chosen a smaller-than-average height for yourself.

The two suspension settings for the ground clearance are most useful when tackling oversized "sleeping policemen" aka speed bumps, or trying to park your Bentley with the wheels on the kerb. Even so, the overall height of the car is lower than that of the "normal" Continental Flying Spur by exactly one centimeter, enough to lower its gravity center but not enough to look like a Lamborghini on steroids.

Apart from the discomfort when parking and cruising through busy traffic, another big, or should we say humongous weak point is its fuel consumption. By all means, we weren't expecting a scooter-like fuel economy, but how do 35-45 liters per 100 kilometers (US 5-7 mpg) sound? This, considering we did our test drive over the weekend, when the city's streets are less crowded than usual. Anyway, apart from the rather poor visibility and the inconvenience caused by the sheer size of the car, the Continental Flying Spur Speed's greatest downside in the city is its gargantuan fuel consumption which, even though it has a 90-liter tank (US 23.8 gallons), can just keep you driving between gas stations.

If we said that the 610 hp twin-turbocharged W12 under the hood is capable of delivering devastating performance, it would be a huge understatement. We should also mention the fact that the engine's torque figures and its power delivery are even more impressive. 750 Nm (553.2 lb ft) of torque are on tap from a very diesel-like 1,750 rpm, giving you a sense of Earth-moving power under your right foot every time you floor it.

Mary's Opinion

So I had the privilege to test a baby from the Bentley family after all… The first thing that crossed my curious mind the moment I got behind the wheel of the Bentley Continental Flying Spur Speed (oh my God, not even members of the Royal family have such a pompous name!) was: why on Earth would a lady enjoy driving such a huge monster? It’s not a car for the ladies, that’s for sure. Oh well, at least not for the ladies who don’t happen to have a personal driver or… those who are not obsessed with the size and the luxury of a sedan…
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Even though the Speed rides on 20-inch alloys wrapped in low-profile 275/35 tires, the floating sensation you would expect from pretty much any 150-200.000+ grand luxury sedan is still there. The feeling is that of a road-going dreadnaught, isolating its occupants from almost every pothole and road imperfection possible. The suspension does have a lot of work on its hands given the car's 2500+ kg (5500+ lb) weight, but trust us, you won't find many cars that ride more comfortable than the Continental Flying Spur Speed, no matter how sporty it is. In fact, this is probably this car's greatest accomplishment. Its ability to handle its own gargantuan weight through a tight corner while at the same time keeping its occupants almost disconnected from the road impurities is majestic and unlike 99.78% of the cars out there. The interior noise comfort is similar to that of a psychiatrist's cabinet during a Xanax sale at the corner drugstore.

There are three tri-laminate wheel liners and the windows have more insulation than a polar bear. Fortunately for purists, only the road and wind noises are kept out, while the exhaust is left to "intervene" freely inside whenever possible. This translates in a very comfortable but mildly alert ride, since you can always hear the rumble underneath the car if the audio system is turned off. Speaking of hi-fi, our test car was fitted with an optional 1,100 Watts Naim audio system with no less than 15 speakers spread around the interior, thus becoming the most powerful system ever made for a production car. We kind of preferred listening to the engine instead of the audio though.

Apart from the center seat from the rear bench, every seat is electrically adjustable in any convenient direction, heated in six levels AND with a massage function for your back. Also, it seems that pretty much all Bentley owners are a bunch of lazy bastards, since every door is electrically assisted if you don't close it with enough determination. Anyway, to arrive at a precocious conclusion, there aren't that many creature comforts that were missing from our test car. Everything from the two car phones to the LCD screens in the front headrests, from the sumptuous leather everywhere in the car to the heated and massaged seats just screams comfort for its occupants.

The Volkswagen D1 platform is also found under the VW Phaeton, the Bentley Continental GT and the GTC (along with their Speed variants, naturally), so you'd expect the manual labor to provide a more retro instead of modern technology. You'd be wrong. The Continental Flying Spur Speed is practically filled with technology. The 610 horsepower are transmitted to all four wheels all the time, there's an upgraded ESP version 8.1 to handle the wheel-spin in a sportier manner, while the four-corner self-leveling air suspension takes car of both comfort and dynamic qualities of the car. There's also an all-new follow-to-stop precision radar-based Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with no less than five time-gap settings so you can cruise comfortably at high speeds on the Autobahn without fear of crashing into slower traffic.

The twin-turbocharged W12 engine, apart from its irresistible power delivery, is also known to be the most compact twelve-cylinder in the world. The trick resides of course in using four lines of three-cylinders each in a "W" pattern instead of two lines of six cylinders. In other words, the engine is about as long as a four-banger and a bit wider than a Vee engine. Even so, the addition of twin turbochargers and the sheer size of the cylinders left no room for the car's battery under the hood, so it now resides in the trunk simply for space-saving purposes, unlike let's say in a BMW.

Although the gadget list in our test car might easily fill just about any Sir May B. Bach wannabe's dreams, we didn't exactly found the mother load of gadgetry in the Continental Flying Spur Speed. Yes, there are a lot of toys and buttons to fiddle with, but nothing which you can't find in a properly equipped Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse. Not to say this is a poorly equipped car, far from it, it's just that everything is made to please its occupants in a more subdued fashion. In other words, it's not the gadgets that should tickle your senses, but the overall feel of the car.

The auto-dimming feature is present both on the center rear-view mirror and the exterior ones, making sure you don't get blinded by an over-achieving HID light while driving into the night. As we mentioned before, our test car was equipped with electrically adjustable, heated and massaging seats both in the front and on the two outboard positions of the rear seat. This feature alone gave us minutes full of entertainment, switching our places in the car almost each time we took it for a spin.

The "Naim for Bentley" audio system and the TV/DVD system with LCD screens in the front headrests and a remote control in the rear could also come in handy if you suffer from car sickness and don't like driving. Another time-consuming but fun feature which we somewhat abused was the control for the four-corner air suspension. As we mentioned before, it has four different hardness settings and two different ground clearance modes, making you play with it just for the fun of seeing the look on bystanders every time you lift it or lower it in the parking lot.

The rear window is of course shielded from curious looks inside by the electrically controlled rear blind, which oddly didn't exist for the rear lateral windows as well. Apparently, the Speed version of the Continental Flying Spur is more of a driver's car than we expected, despite the gigantic leg room in and the size of the rear doors. The remote-controlled opening of the luggage compartment and the doors with power latches also gave us plenty of smiles every time we tried them. Also, the four-zone climate control system with digital controls for four different passengers was nothing to be ashamed about, albeit not a very original feature.

Unfortunately, we're not aware of any crash-test when a Bentley or any other hyper-expensive automobile has ever been put through. Fortunately, that doesn't mean we don't trust being in a Continental Flying Spur Speed in an impact with almost any five-star getting car at the EuroNCAP or other crash-testing organization. Apart from giving you the feeling this is a tank with leather interior, our test was equipped with the second largest disk brakes for a production car in the world for skin-stripping stopping power, a state of the art Electronic Stability Programme system, Anti-Lock Braking System with an emergency braking feature and a radar-based cruise control system.

It that's not enough for you crash hypochondriacs, there were no less than eight airbags spread around the interior. Two frontal dual-stage airbags, four side airbags for each outboard passenger and two head airbags that go from the front to the rear, thus preventing almost all passengers from transforming their heads into bowling balls in the event of a lateral impact. If you are still scared by the outcome of a potential life-threatening crash, the 2500+ kg (5500+ lb) weight should make you rest assured that in the event of a crash you're going to plow through just about anything you might hit.

The best part of the Bentley Continental Flying Spur must be its ability to impress without resulting to any flashy gimmick. The overall stance with the mesh grill, the lateral character lines or the see-through alloy rims are there to inform everyone looking that this is British luxury at its best. Also, the twin oval exhaust exits are practically the exit points of captive thunder, or how hell itself must sound, making any ricer with an aftermarket fart-can exhaust retire in shame from a "rumbling" contest. They give way to a sound which you can feel, not only hear. Sure, depending on the color chosen, you can impress in a more understated or in-your-face manner, but the simple fact that you don't see the actual name of the car anywhere on it is simply class. It's opulent, but it delimits its territory by its sheer presence. You just "know" it's there, it doesn't have to scream at you or make funny faces.

A bad issue we've had with our test car might be its humongous size. Sure, there's a rear-view parking camera and a vast array of parking sensors both in the front and in the rear, but this is a car totally unsuited for the busy streets. It's not exactly hell to park if you find the right-sized spot, but moving through stop-and-go traffic can become really old, really fast. Plus, you can actually see the fuel consumption gauge move every time you floor it, and we're almost not kidding. If you're crazy enough to set the on-board computer to show you the instantaneous fuel consumption, each time you gently push the accelerator pedal to pass someone you're only going to see three figures: 99.9. Those are liters per 100 km (US 2.3 mpg) by the way. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The ugly bit about any hyper-expensive automobile is, naturally, the fact we're never going to own such a fine piece of machinery. It doesn't hurt to play the lottery each time you get the chance, but apart from working hard (and smart) for at least a decade you might find yourself in the appropriate circumstances to actually afford something like this. If that is the case with you, just know that this car is really one of the top dogs, one of the very few sedans that can actually make you feel differently about cars and what type of sensations they can bring to you.