A beauty fit for Bond
Alan Judd
During the initial stage of a loop in a fast jet trainer, the g-force makes you feel you're sharing the cockpit with an invisible elephant, and your head becomes a cannonball. By the time you're upside down and looking up at the fields 7,000ft below, you feel normal again. To the side, about 10ft from your own red wingtips, are those of your colleagues in formation. The pilot in the nearest aircraft grins and waves.
As you complete the loop, the invisible elephant returns, until you level off. The point at which I nearly lost it was when we did a mock low-level strafe of the airfield followed by a high, curving break-out to the right, taps full on to escape ground fire. Perhaps I did lose it. My brain was shutting down. I was conscious that something was wrong but incapable of understanding what, or of minding. Maybe that's what it's like to die, if you're lucky. Then, quite suddenly, all was clear again. 'We pulled five and a half g there,' the pilot said afterwards.
Earlier, on the racetrack in one of the Le Mans-winning Bentleys, we'd pulled about 3g, but that was lateral. There, you're more likely to black out through noise and heat (over 120F in the winning car this year) and sheer visual overload as the corners come at you like demons in triplicate. I'd no idea how hard racing drivers work, physically and mentally. With the pit-limiter off, you start with an explosion of torque that leaves unprepared bystanders dazed and tottering. You're still being flattened into your seat when you're into the first bend, which — I'd modestly announced beforehand — is where I thought I'd probably lose the car if I were driving. What hubris. I doubt I could go straight in that beautiful and venomous giant green hornet, the EX-P Speed 8, let alone gun it through hairpins. At Le Mans this year they did over 3.000 miles in 24 hours, averaging over 130mph including pit stops (28 minutes).
We did rather less than that in our little 200bhp single-seaters. We were still learning to unlearn the driving habits that keep you safe on the road — or on it at all. Using the full width of the track, varying the corner line, trying not to brake, keeping revs high and gears low, even at our novice speeds we had to be unpeeled from our cramped cockpits after the chequered flag.
And what was this feast of sensation, this riot of torque, noise and g-force? Well, it was the froth, the frill around the serious stuff: a car launch in Spain. Just as nobody does launches like Bentley, where you share the fun and games with the chairman, the designers and engineers, so nobody, I believe, currently makes a car like the one at the centre of it all: the new four-seater Continental OT coupe.
I make no apology for writing about Bentley again, because this car is truly something different: a £110,000 supercar in which you could drive to work. Externally, the design echoes the iconic 1950s R-Type Continental, with similar tiger's haunches, long bonnet and purposeful face. Most importantly, it also has no B-pillars. The rear — so often the hardest part to get right — is uncompromising, almost brutal, yet the overall effect is of compact elegance, restrained power, Beauty and the Beast combined. Like Sean Connery's James Bond, there's a suggestion of brooding potency beneath impeccable manners.
The interior, designed by Mark Page, is a triumph, with the major dash lines discreetly reflecting the winged Bentley badge and the wood panels curved to create a cocoon effect. They even ensured that the traditional silvered and knurled switchgear can cope with long female fingernails — this is a car that Bond's girls would want as well. The front seats cater for most backs (12 motors in each, including one that massages), while the rear is large enough to claim it's a genuine four-seater — just. If you've a long back, you'll find your head against the roof. I'd go out to dinner like that, but not to Biarritz. The boot, surprisingly, will take two sets of golf clubs plus luggage.
Theoretically limited by tyre regulations to 198mph, in practice this 2.3 tonne car is comfortably in the 200 club. I never got above 145mph, at which it was solid on the road and still quiet, with no numbing Ferrari roar or wearying Porsche clatter. The effortless torque of that 6-litre, 12cylinder VW-derived engine (all but the block is made at Crewe) cannot be conveyed without debasing linguistic currency. You have to feel it.
This is a world-class car, at once a radical departure and a return to Bentley's sport
ing origins. Someone suggested it was too perfect to have character, like the Audis of its parent company, but that's rubbish. It has real presence: people stop in the street to stare. If your life needs a touch of exotica, you won't find a more beautiful or more willing automotive accomplice.
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