BENTLEY Continental Flying Spur Speed Review

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.