Bentley Continental Flying Spur (2005)

Bentley Continental Flying Spur (2005)

The Bentley Continental Flying Spur is a four-door variant of the Bentley Continental GT coupé. The Bentley Continental Flying Spur was introduced in 2005. This car shares its platform with the Volkswagen Phaeton, and its powertrain components are related to those on the Audi A8 and S8. It was designed by the same team as produced the Continental GT and Continental GTC.

The Bentley Continental Flying Spur (2006–present) is spacious four-door Grand Tourer with the powerful high-performance (twin-turbo W12 engine producing 600 hp) of a sports coupé. The car offers unparalleled craftsmanship and refinement – there is leather, wood, or metal on every surface touched by the occupant. The driver’s seat benefits from multiple power adjustments, including headrest height, thigh support and massage. According to Bentley, the wood veneers are mirror-matched, and the leather is cut from magnificent hides. The car is touted as a competitor to the Rolls Royce Ghost.

Other options include fine furniture-quality service trays with vanity mirrors and fold down lights($2,685), and a remote-controlled rear-seat entertainment system ($8,010) in the front row headrests. The Premium Specification offers Lambswool Rugs.

The steering column-mounted paddle shifters enable direct access to the six-speed gearbox when the ZF transmission is in “S” or sports mode.The Continental Flying Spur is equipped with a 5,998 cubic centimetres (366.0 cu in) (6.0 litre) twin-turbocharged W12 engine. It produces a DIN-rated motive power output of 560 metric horsepower (412 kW; 552 bhp) at 6,100 rpm, and torque of 650 newton metres (479 lbf·ft) at 1,600-6,100 rpm. Torsen-based permanent four-wheel drive is standard. It will complete the standard sprint of 0–100 kilometres per hour (0.0–62.1 mph) in 5.2 seconds, and can reach a top speed of 312 kilometres per hour (194 mph).

The Continental Flying Spur is exclusively hand built at Bentley's only manufacturing plant in Crewe, England. Briefly, due to a lack of capacity at the Crewe factory upon the car's introduction, some Flying Spurs destined for markets other than the USA and UK were built at Volkswagen's Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany. This arrangement ended in 2006, when all assembly work reverted to Crewe.