Currently reading: Bentley Flying Spur: riding up the hill at Goodwood

We speak to Bentley's vehicle dynamics boss as he drives us up the infamous hill on a wet Sunday morning

Autocar took to a streaming-wet Goodwood hillclimb at 10.45 on Sunday morning, having watched a scary series of antique bikes and cars wobble and weave in the rain to the top of the famous course.

We shouldn’t have worried about the fortunes of the all-new Bentley Flying Spur – or its 626bhp W12 – because a proper expert called Andrew Unsworth, the Crewe company’s head of vehicle dynamics, was at the wheel, and in any case the car bristled with stability and traction controls tuned for difficult occasions like this one. 

What’s more, the Flying Spur is a brand-new design, based on the Volkswagen Group’s MSB architecture specifically designed for its largest vehicles, that shares its major elements with the Porsche Panamera. Whereas the previous Flying Spur was related to the now-defunct VW Phaeton limo, and was severely limited in packaging and tyre sizes by that, the new model, about to go on sale, has a chassis and suspension set-up whose main elements were included in the original MSB programme, with Bentley engineers carrying as much clout in the negotiations as their Porsche colleagues.

All the news from Goodwood Festival of Speed

“It’s not really a platform in the conventional sense,” says Unsworth, “because it’s highly flexible and can be altered quite radically in dimensions to suit particular applications."

We drove slowly along a crowd-lined passage to the start line, entirely surrounded by car lovers as we waited to run. As usual, the knowledge and enthusiasm of the Goodwood crowd was deeply impressive, even intoxicating, and it was clear (because so many of them told us) that the new Bentley’s much more graceful proportions were obvious and very appealing.

Suddenly it was time to go, and though we could see from the cars ahead that the greasy road was upsetting many, the Spur’s four-wheel drive and sophisticated traction control system had no trouble laying down the power with barely half a revolution of wheelspin. We fairly rocketed off the start and towards the Goodwood hillclimb’s first double-apex bend, the space and leathered luxury of this car (as usual with a Bentley) not quite computing with the huge performance, accompanied now by a smooth and well-bred roar from the engine.  

It’s hard to think under such conditions but I have three main impressions: first, the way this car can lay down its power and torque under difficult conditions is exceptional (in yesterday’s timed runs, our Flying Spur shamed many supercars). Second, the influence of this car’s long (3194mm) wheelbase has on its comfort and stability takes it away from sports cars – in a good way. Third, the way Bentleys mix extreme refinement with top performance is still very special. 

Unsworth, who has been working on this car for three years, was the perfect demonstration driver, but I felt that even in the hands of a much less able driver (such as your ham-fisted humble servant), this car would have been a brilliant all-rounder. Chuck in the beautiful styling and the huge road presence, and suddenly the predicted £170k price (plus options, of course) looks like value.

Advertisement

Read our review

Car review

This second-generation Flying Spur changes tack in its quest to become a slicker limousine

Back to top

Steve Cropley

Steve Cropley Autocar
Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business. 

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back. 

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

Add a comment…