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Bentley Flying Spur

SPURRED ONWARDS (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

Bentley's third generation Flying Spur saloon diverges a little more from its Continental origins. Is any saloon in the world really better than this one? Jonathan Crouch wonders.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 55

The third generation version of Bentley's Continental Flying Spur blends old-school craftsmanship with the latest technology in the super-luxury saloon sector. Beneath the chrome trim, the leather and the wood veneers, there's cutting-edge tech at work producing breathtaking results and creating in this boardroom-segment limousine the world's fastest four-door. It's hard not to be impressed.

Backgroundword count: 159

The Flying Spur names dates back to 1959 and saloon version of Bentley's R-Type Continental Coupe. With a name borrowed from the family crest of Arthur Talbot Johnstone, Managing Director of the coachbuilder Mulliner. In the modern Volkswagen Group-owned era, the 'Continental Flying Spur' badge was revived in 2005 for a saloon version of the Continental GT Coupe, with a second generation design (just known as the 'Flying Spur') appearing a decade later in 2015, a scant four years before the arrival of this more fundamentally new MK3 model. The obvious rivals to this car lie with models like the Mercedes-Maybach S650 and the Rolls Royce Ghost, but in concept, what's on offer here is probably better understood as something a bit more dynamic than that: imagine a cross between a BMW M5 and a Rolls Royce Phantom and you'll be somewhere close. This is the world's faster four-door: but that's not the only reason it's very desirable indeed....

Driving Experienceword count: 296

Bentley's worked hard to make this Flying Spur more of its own car in this third generation form - it's the brand's first vehicle to feature four-wheel steering for instance. This model still though, owes most of its engineering to its Continental GT coupe showroom stablemate, which in turn borrows is MSB platform, 8-speed twin clutch auto transmission and rear suspension from a Porsche Panamera. Like the Conti GT, the Flying Spur was launched with a W12 twelve cylinder unit. That W12 now only comes with a top 'Speed' variant offering 635PS, which spirits you to 60mph in just 3.8s en route to 207mph, which makes it the world's fastest saloon. This car is also engineered for a 4.0-litre petrol V8 (sourced from Audi with 550PS). Or you could choose a 2.9-litre V6 petrol Plug-in petrol hybrid unit, which has 544PS, plus an all-electric driving range of around 26 miles. This PHEV uses an 18kWh battery and sprints to 60mph in 4.1s. A key change over the previous generation Flying Spur lies with the integration of a more reactive all-wheel drive system. The old set-up featured a fixed 40:60 split between front and rear wheels and left the car understeering rather easily when you tried to push it along. In contrast, the replacement 'Active All-Wheel-Drive' package can constantly vary front-to-rear torque split depending on the driving situation and deliberately leaves the car using rear wheel drive as much as possible. As before, there's air suspension, now a three-chamber system that works in conjunction with the clever 48V electro-mechanical anti-roll bars first seen on the Bentayga. Suspension feel is one of the things you can influence via three provided driving modes - 'Sport', 'Comfort' and 'Bentley'. Steering feel and throttle response also get tweaked with the settings.

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Pictures (high res disabled)

Statistics (subset of data only)

Min

Max

Price:

£168,300.00

Insurance group 1-50:

50

CO2 (g/km):

337

Max Speed (mph):

207

0-62 mph (s):

3.7

Combined Mpg:

19.2

Length (mm):

5316

Width (mm):

2220

Height (mm):

1484

Boot Capacity (l):

420

Scoring (subset of scores)

Category: Luxury Saloons and Estates

Performance
90%
Handling
80%
Comfort
80%
Space
80%
Styling, Build, Value, Equipment, Depreciation, Handling, Insurance and Total scores are available with our full data feed.

This is an excerpt from our full review.
To access the full content library please contact us on 0330 0020 227 or click here

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