BENTLEY, BOOSTED

Flying Spur super-saloon begins post-W12 era with even more power and luxury

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uffenhausen old boy and recently installed CEO at Bentley Motors, the estimable Frank-Steffen Walliser, recently spoke to us about making “something more extreme”.

Settling into his new role after 29 years with Porsche, the German was hinting at future models that could bring added excitement to the traditional Bentley way of doing things (911 GT3 RS treatment for the Conti GT, anyone?), but he could just as well have been talking about the super-saloon he's just launched.

You're looking at the latest Flying Spur, which now comes exclusively in V8 hybrid flavour and with no shortage of horsepower in any form, but especially in top-billing Speed guise, as we have here. This car puts out as near as dammit 800bhp and thus comfortably outguns its 6.0-litre W12 predecessor. The old Speed had to make do with 626bhp, a figure that hardly needed a bump of nearly 25%, but when electrically generated power comes relatively easily, why on earth wouldn't you?

It's a thought-provoking level of shove for a car that, despite its quietly driver-oriented bent, will serve most owners purely as a luxury conveyance, shuttling them about the world's more salubrious postcodes in comfort and style.