Short Take Road Test
How do you explain the things this 5500-pound behemoth can do? It reaches 60 mph in 4.2 seconds—that’s verging on Corvette territory. It has 0.89 g of skidpad grip—as sticky as a Cadillac CTS- V . There’s also the 165-foot 70-to-0-mph stopping distance—a foot shorter than a Lamborghini Murciélago LP640’s.
Of course, one might be tempted to call it magic, the trick of some gray-bearded, spell-casting wizard—but that would be silly. Instead, blame this car’s performance on the Bentley engineers (some of whom may, in fact, have gray beards) who created this Speed, the über-version of the Continental Flying Spur. The recipe was thus: Take the normal car and uprate the engine, work over the suspension, retune the steering, and slap on high-performance rubber. The 6.0-liter twin-turbo W-12 is now good for an even 600 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, up from 552 hp and 479 lb-ft. The suspension has been lowered by 0.4 inch and has new spring and shock rates and beefier anti-roll bars.
Gargantuan but Agile
The changes are noticeable. When you punch the throttle, the result feels a bit like riding a skyscraper shot out of an artillery piece, with max torque coming at a low 1750 rpm. The sounds you hear are dominated by intake whoosh and a determined, locomotive groan from the engine room. But, disappointingly, the exhaust is overwhelmed by wind noise with the windows down and simply eliminated with the double-paned glass up. On throttle lift, you can detect a pleasing woofle from the back, but it seems that only bystanders are destined to hear the W-12’s exhaust note. Gotta toss the proles a cookie sometimes.
Once we had our fill of brake-torque launches and straight-line assaults on the horizon, we headed for the twisties, where we found it’s best to dial back from a frenetic pace, since the Spur Speed tends to understeer like a horse with no front legs (not shocking for a car with 56 percent of its weight up front). Still, the car is surprisingly agile for its girth, and a dash of throttle will help alleviate the push as the all-wheel drive sorts out where you want to go. The brakes on our test car were of the optional $16,500 carbon-ceramic variety, and they offered very good control and feel once they warmed up. (Yeah, the brakes cost as much as a Honda Fit, but they’re really just a drop in the bucket when you’re talking about an as-tested price of $236,665.) As mentioned, they haul this beast down with alarming ferocity, with a hat tip to the 275/35-20 Pirelli P Zero rubber.
The car’s adjustable air suspension is impressive in its range; in its softest setting, the Spur Speed does its best to float down the road. In its firmest setting, the car’s capability rises commensurately—midcorner bumps ain’t no thing, and body roll is nicely tied down. It’s too bad, then, about the crashing you hear and feel from the huge, beautiful 20-inch multispoke Speed wheels, which are necessarily large to accommodate the massive 15.9-inch front and 14.0-inch rear brakes—some of the largest fitted to any production vehicle. After testing the suspension’s adjustability, we found ourselves satisfied with its middle setting in everyday driving.
Accommodations Fit for Someone with 200 Large
Inside the Speed Spur, decadent trappings abound, from the Naim stereo—plucked from a couple of shelves above the top shelf—and the Breitling timepiece embedded in the dash to the exquisite dimpled headliner and quilted inserts for the seats and doors. The knurled Bentley gear lever is as elegant and substantial as ever. Much of the switchgear moves with a heft and precision that belies its fine craftsmanship; the window switches, for example, are pure tactile perfection. (A few controls, however—such as the center-stack buttons—don’t transcend their humble Volkswagen roots.)
Simple circles, squares, and rectangles dominate the classically designed dash. The info screen in the gauge cluster and the nav screen are the only meaningful concessions to modernity, although they’re a bit late-‘90s in speed and resolution rather than state of the art. The piano black trim (a no-cost option, like the headliner and quilted seats) is achingly deep in both color and luster, and we love the polished plungers that close the vents. The best thing, though, was our test car’s leather upholstery, which was so red it appeared dyed from the blood of infidels. The color was shocking in a way that the subdued champagne exterior paint unfortunately was not, and the pairing had us thinking of a stripper in a pantsuit.
So…?
The choices in this price range are basically this or a Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG, although Rolls-Royce will begin to play nearby with its upcoming Ghost. The Benz is a better car to drive by far, with a more modern chassis that feels more cohesive, but it isn’t a Bentley—and few things are. Being the déclassé degenerates that we are, we took the Spur Speed to a fast-food drive-through, and the kid working the window left his post, came outside, and demanded a ride. We don’t know if he got fired, but there’s little doubt that he believed the trip around the block was worth the risk—and he likely wouldn’t feel the same about any S-class.
