Bentley Continental GT W12 …
Now bear with me, but I felt like Biggles the other day. And no, I wasn’t flying. In fact my wheels never left the ground. But the reason was that I was sitting behind a 12 cylinder engine and watching the horizon rise and fall as I prodded the accelerator and then lifted off, while listening to the glorious rumble and thrruuumm of 12 cylinders all going at it like demented hamsters in a Hotpoint 1400 rpm Turbo tumble dryer.
Now I know the purists will tell me that the Merlin V12 is nothing like Volkswagen’s W12, but I don’t give a damn, I still felt like Biggles. It wasn’t just the engine, it was down to the suspension as well.
The Bentley Continental GT W12 wafted from lock to lock like a biplane in a breeze, so insulated from the road are the occupants. It was uncanny. And if you think this was because it rolled like a CalMac ferry in a heavy swell, it wasn’t and it didn’t. In fact, there was hardly any noticeable roll. Just a slight tilt to the sky line and terrain through the windscreen. So I use the word ‘waft’ deliberately, because that was what it did.
Honestly, climbing aboard a Bentley is like entering a different world of motoring. The seats are sumptuous, like being caressed by a slightly overweight and cuddlesome supermodel wearing soft and supple motorcycle leathers and then sitting cocooned in a gentleman’s club.
Neither had any acres of squirrel country been destroyed to make the dashboard, this was shiny piano black plastic, only it wasn’t plastic. Rapped knuckles. It was actually ‘dark tint aluminium fascia panels’! Whatever, the end result is a driving space that would put many a Russian oligarch bachelor pad to shame in terms of equipment and luxury.
The 8 inch colour screen and custom ‘Naim for Bentley’ (I had to look them up as well!) audio equipment with the 900W eleven speaker set-up defied my attempts to find all 11 speakers, but I was assured that were indeed 11 speakers, as opposed to the ‘standard’ 8 speaker system. Naturally there was a 6 disc CD changer, SD card reader, iPod connector and a 30 Gb on-board hard drive plus Bluetooth and a privacy handset. End result? It would either soothe even the worst of those ‘bad day at work’ feelings or blow your ears off.
The word ‘extras’ takes on a whole new meaning when dealing with this class of motor car. For instance, to be charged £775 for a neck warmer is a tad excessive, especially when the wife can knit a Doctor Who special in two evenings for ten quid, and the boot carpet ‘option’ provides half an acre of deep pile twist that would look excessive in my living room at home. And as for the carbon ceramic brakes, well that was just silly.
The Bentley is not that heavy (2750 kgs) compared to some other road going exotica, so the standard cast iron discs would have done just as well as the optional ‘carbon-silicon-carbide’ units, to give them their proper title.
In fact, this car had another £38,000 worth of extras from the options list including a 9 grand paint job and 1400 quidsworth of contract stitching on the leather!
But the biggest attraction lies under the bonnet, 5998 ccs of alloy and forged steel with twin turbochargers. The end result is 567 bhp and a monstrous 700 Nm of torque, and yet the delivery can be as gentle as a puppy tugging on a bog roll or as invigorating as pulling the joystick back and shouting “yeee-haaa” into the sun as you loop the loop and chase the bandits. Not quite literally, of course.
It’s not neck-snappingly quick, that’s not what the Bentley is about, but it is viscerally enjoyable. Sinking back into the leather and watching the nose rise almost imperceptibly seven feet in front of you, it is just motoring in a different dimension.
It’s whisper quiet, it is serene, it is supremely comfortable and yet it is seriously quick. It has no faults and even fewer bad manners. It can be as sensation-less as you want and as quick as you need, and on that basis I can understand why so many of the overpaid and over celebritised in this world buy it. It’s all about image and effortless driving. It will cosset and deliver egos without effort or bruising, It is just a pity that motoring on this level is not available to a wider public. But I suppose that’s what separates the Dragons from the rest of the food chain, and it gives the rest of us something to aspire to.
An even bigger surprise was that the Bentley boys and girls let me drive it on my own. A rare thing in these H&S conscious days where manufacturers of ‘performance’ and ‘exotic’ cars treat everyone with equal distrust, and often provide accompanists with motoring journalists, either an engineer or a ‘professional’ driver. Obviously my reputation and helmsmanship precedes me – or else they simply thought a well-groomed, presentable old fart would be safe with a 200 grand motor.
If they had seen me they might have re-considered. I was laughing like a big kid in a Meccano factory. Anyone outside the car might have wondered where the carers in white coats were. Few cars can turn cynical motoring hacks into such lustful metal worshippers, this is one of them.
As ever, with such a complex and evocative piece of metal under the bonnet, my biggest complaint was that I couldn’t hear the thing. If having spent all that money on such an engine and I couldn’t hear it I would have felt cheated. For sure there was a distant and well muffled roar, but that only made the thing even more frustrating. Sort of look but don’t touch, like window shopping in a Scalextrix shop – desperate to get at it, but prevented from hands-on. In other words, if Bentley fit an active exhaust – I’ll have one!
It would go rather nicely with my leather helmet, sheepskin jerkin and goggles.