Bentley Flying Spur Speed review: attempting a park in this car was a mistake

At 5.3m long and almost 2m wide, I managed to cause a hate-filled traffic jam of people who seemed overly willing to offer me advice.

I made the mistake of driving the Flying Spur into a shopping mall car park on day one, writes Stephen Corby.

Now, I’m all for subtlety in design, but making your car disappear entirely really is going below and beyond. I experienced this recently while sitting in the presumably imposing Bentley Flying Spur Speed (the name alone suggests something wicked this way comes) and pondering the essential question of my long, arduous working week: do I actually like this car?

What I discovered, to my surprise and alarm, was that after driving it for a couple of days I couldn’t remember whether I liked the external styling of the car because I couldn’t remember what it looked like at all. OK, actually I could remember the androidally amusing Flying B hood ornament that rises from the car’s bluff nose when you unlock it, which looks like either one of Thanos’s portentous knuckles or what WALL-E’s penis would resemble, if he had one, but other than that I was drawing a very large blank.

Its tyres are stretched across what appear to be four ferris wheels.

The Flying Spur is a lot of car to forget, at 5.3m long and almost 2m wide, and with tyres stretched across what appear to be four ferris wheels. I made the mistake of driving it into a shopping mall car park on day one. Not learning from that, I later attempted to park it on the street in an inner-city suburb and caused a particularly hate-filled traffic jam of people who seemed overly willing to offer me advice (although much of it didn’t seem relevant; if I’d wanted to “go and get trucked”, I would have borrowed the Bentley Bentayga SUV instead).

While the amorphous mass of the Flying Spur’s exterior (which was not helped by a choice of paint colour - when it came to the car I was driving - best described as “None” or, generously, “Melbourne Sky Grey”) made no impact on my erogenous zones, I did enjoy the solidly expensive feel, fit and finish of the interior, which features a spinning central dash seemingly stolen from Dr Who. At the push of a button it can be a touchscreen, a classy plain expanse of carbon fibre or a lovely collection of three analogue dials, including a compass.

The Flying Spur is a lot of car to forget.

I must admit I was more struck by the effects of the twin-turbocharged W12 engine – effectively two V6s jammed together by the kind of engineers who believe fuel economy is for wimps – beneath the Flying Spur’s enormous bonnet. Such an engine suggests scary loudness and intimidating acceleration, but for the first day I didn’t hear a sound out of it. The thing is, Bentleys, even the ones called “Speed”, feel like effortless, seamless bruiser-cruisers; they thrust, but they do not intimidate or show off. They are 1990s Schwarzenegger in a suit, not a posing pouch.

Its spinning central dash seemingly stolen from Dr Who.

Happily, however, I eventually found a button marked Sport and a stretch of open road and flexed my right foot. After a moment’s delicious hesitation – as if the car was asking politely whether I was sure I wanted to do that – the Flying Spur delivered some genuine Speed, leaping away like a frisky bull elephant. It even made some proper bellows and metallic screams, which seemed appropriate for a machine with 467kW and 900Nm.

Unfortunately, I then got carried away with stabbing the loud pedal and found that its ability to move 2.5 tonnes rapidly through space (zero to 100km/h in just 3.8 seconds) could cause some issues, some of which would frighten a physics student.

I found that its ability to move 2.5 tonnes rapidly through space could cause some issues.

Fortunately, I was given a chance to feel much safer later in the week when I swapped into the Flying Spur Hybrid, which uses just one V6 engine and an electric motor. It looks like the same car – although the Hybrid was slightly more memorable in a lovely metallic green – but it can be driven in entirely silent, emission-free EV mode for up to 40km.

I must say I struggled with this, not because it was less exciting to drive, although it was, but because I simply couldn’t imagine that anyone who wants to spend half a million bucks on a Flying Spur gives a toot about fuel economy or the environment.

I did enjoy the solidly expensive feel, fit and finish of the interior.

It made me picture Clive Palmer on a bicycle. After handing that one back I felt safe to look at the pricing sheet and discovered that many of the things I liked about it, like the Bentley Rotating Display and the Illuminated Flying B Radiator Mascot, are cost options, which took the list price from a standard $456,000 to a whopping $589,461 (which is more than the $573,900 you can pay for the Speed version, without options).

This made me feel that perhaps Bentley should have sent around a butler to plug the hybrid into my EV charger every day, which is how often I needed to do it to experience a glow as green as its Viridian Green paint.

So which one would I have? I don’t think you have to be the kind of person who’d buy a Bentley to see that the Hybrid is a waste of time, and a lot of money.

I’ll take a W12, thanks, and put it in my Museum of Motoring Dinosaurs.

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Bentley Flying Spur Speed

ENGINE: 6.0-litre W12 (467kW/900Nm)
FUEL ECONOMY: 17.1 litres per 100km (ouch)
TRANSMISSION: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic, all-wheel drive
PRICE: $573,900

RATING: 3.5 stars out of five