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BENTLEY Continental Flying Spur Speed Review

OUR TEST CAR: BENTLEY Continental Flying Spur Speed

 
BENTLEY Continental Flying Spur Speed  - Page - 1
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.

First, the overall bodywork sits lower by 10 mm, then there are new 20-inch alloy wheels housing the second largest brake disks in the history of production cars (the number one spot is filled by another Bentley brake disk) and there are wider rifled sports exhaust tail pipes. As soon as you open one of the four safe-like doors you can observe even more differences, starting with the "Speed" encrusted door sills, the three-spoke sports steering wheel, the diamond-quilted hide of the seat facings and the door panels and the last but not least, the drilled alloy sport foot-pedals and knurled chrome/hide gear knob.

Our test car was black, which was a pain in the butt for Tudor Raiciu, our photographer, but a symbol of "serious business", mafia style, whenever we parked it. The color somewhat manages to distract from the gargantuan size, but it also adds some hearse-looking lines on the side of the car. Some of us at autoevolution are both "The Godfather" and hearse fans, so that worked out just fine eventually.

The 20-inch multi-spoke smoked alloys look absolutely stunning and fill out the wheel arches just fine. Also on the plus side, you can wash them more rarely, since the brake dust doesn't seem to affect them that much even after heavy braking. The only somewhat of a turn-off was the fact that our test car had the optional bright chrome grilles and lower intakes, making the front of the car look almost identical to the "regular" Flying Spur. The "Speed" model usually has a dark-tinted chrome matrix.

Another disappointment in the "grille department" came from the fact that the chrome is actually made of plastic. Before jumping to any conclusions though, you should know the fact that the real metal was switched with plastic because of pedestrian safety laws and not by a twisted British/German greediness or economy in materials. On the whole, the Continental Flying Spur Continental looks just like a luxury performance sedan should look. It has both an overwhelming road presence and an understated high-end feel, sparing a lot of details which might inform you of its brutish performance.

The bi-xenon twin-oval headlights flank the (plastic) chrome mesh of the huge grille, giving it the look of a four-eyed angry gopher with a Hannibal-like metallic face-mask. The side is a bit disproportionate compared to a normal three-box sedan because of its Continental GT family traits which give it a huge rear overhang and the oversized rear doors. Still, the lateral design doesn't seem that out of place especially in a darker color, and the 20-inch "dubs" take most of the attention anyway. The rear design is monopolized by the big LED-powered stop lights with chrome inlays and the oldschool, Conti GT-like trunk design, making it look both retro and modern.

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.

The attention to detail of the Crewe-workers can be found in almost every element of the interior. The "Bentley" emblem stitches on each headrest, the diamond patterns on the leather seats and even the silver/chrome looking retro knobs and buttons just scream compulsive care from its manufacturers. Our test vehicle was equipped with beige and black softer-than-a-baby's-bottom leather with enough hand-made stitches to eclipse just about any shed-built supercar.

The piano-black wood veneer on the center console(s) looks like it was nicked from an ebony Steinway Concert Grand Model D, and after reading about how it's actually done you might want to reconsider your beliefs about wood inserts in automobiles. Apparently it takes two whole weeks to prepare the wood inserts for every car, with five coats of lacquer and three days of curing time before each wood veneer is wax polished by hand. If that doesn't impress you, learn that each leaf of veneer can actually be traced back to the tree it came from. Tree-huggers should control their rage when reading this since each tree that is cut down to be transformed in interior veneer for Bentleys is replaced with another. Of course, this can't be said from the animals whose skins is now hugging the seats (among other parts of the interior), but that will anger a different kind of eco-friendly people.

The overall interior space hosts five persons in complete comfort even if they hate each other and can't stand enclosed areas. A small minus is for the driver and front-passenger seats which, although FAR from giving you any claustrophobic symptoms, are a bit more crowded than we would have expected from a leviathan as this one. Don't take it the wrong way, the front seats aren't crammed or anything, they're just very antithetical in space providing compared with the rear bench.

Since no car out there is perfect from any point of view, we had to find a few nasty details even in this hand-made Bentley. We couldn't find anything wrong in using Volkswagen's D1 platform until we had a close look and touched some of the non-touchscreen infotainment system buttons. You see, they're not exactly cheap-looking and feeling, but giving the fact you can also find them in a common Volkswagen kind of took away from all the "hand made" magic. Overall, despite some of the Vee-Dub sourced buttons, this is easily one of the top five or even three automobile interiors we have ever experienced.

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.

The major point of discussion about this powerplant isn't just its overwhelming power but also the way it delivers it. On paper, it achieves 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.8 seconds. In real life, those seconds seem just about right, except for the sense of speed they give you, which is way way understated.

Imagine this scenario: you're traveling at a rather unspectacular rate of speed, let's say 80 km/h (50 mph), and suddenly you feel the urge to move the gear knob into "Sport" mode and floor it to enjoy a nice kick in the back of your head from the powerful acceleration. In just pretty much the same time it might take you to read this phrase you're already doing 170 km/h (105 mph), without any sense that you're driving way above the speed limit.

This is is becoming even more impressive when you realize this unearthly acceleration is done by a 2500+ kg (5500+ lb) barbarian, nicely shaved and wearing a tuxedo. Acting very different than any other manu-matic transmission we've experienced, the 6-speed transmission's "Sport" mode doesn't just modify the gear changing characteristics, but it also gives you a crisper steering, tighter suspension settings and it sends a signal which modifies the back pressure of the exhaust.

From the constant burble and mumble at low revs we were experiencing in "normal" Drive mode, the car becomes an all-out 12-cylinder supercar, raising every hair on your back every time you "kick it". If we could compare the way the exhaust sounds in "Sport" mode to something it would probably be an opera singer that's on a diet of razor blades and rusty nails. Also, the way it sounds whenever you're lifting your foot of the accelerator pedal after a short burst through traffic is literally unholy.

Sadly, we didn't get to test if the "Speed" moniker in the name was good enough for the advertised 322 km/h (200 mph) since we didn't encounter any stretch of Autobahn during our test drive. Even so, considering the composure with which the heavy leviathan ate every mile outside the city, we can only guess that a 200 mph experience in this car wouldn't be as scary as in a pure bred sports car. Especially since the g-forces experienced while braking the behemoth are comparable to those in a Porsche, despite its sheer size.
12
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autoevolution Mar 2009
88
History
10
Exterior
9
Interior
9
In the city
5
Open road
9
Comfort
9
Tech facts
10
Gadgets
9
Safety
9
Conclusion
9
58user rating 15 votes
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