Past and present

Most associate James Bond with Astons (sorry Lotus and BMW), but when author Ian Fleming introduced his famous superspy in Casino Royale the book, he was driving a 4½ litre Bentley. Built in 1930, Bond is related to have bought the car in 1933 and stored it during World War II.

A battleship grey convertible coupé, the Bentley had large French Marchal headlamps and an Amherst Villiers supercharger.

We were to meet another one of those rare supercharged ‘Bentley Blowers’ which, having completed its earlier mission in Oman (mostly PR, with very little derring-do) was taking a breather in the Hatta Fort Hotel.

We had to rendezvous with it and get it back to Dubai for its new assignment (fun rides for VIPs and journos at an Autodrome-based Bentley driving day).

Obviously it would be inappropriate to go meet it in say, a Ford Mondeo (tell that to current celluloid Bond, Daniel Craig), so we opted for the car today’s Bond should logically be peddling – instead of Craig’s flipping DBS from Casino Royale the movie, and found ourselves pointing a tinted grille and jutting front spoiler south, and gingerly squeezing the load pedal of the fastest (0-100 in 4.5 sec and 326kph), most powerful Bentley ever.

Okay, maybe not the pouting torso that is Daniel Craig, but certainly either the burly, intimidating presence of Sean Connery, or the smooth charm and casual lethality of Roger Moore, would sit nicely in those beautifully bolstered and luxuriant front leather couches.

There’s certainly a lot about the Continental GT Speed that says 007 better even than Aston’s finest.

Suave, sophisticated, stylish; there are elements of wit and wisdom in the Speed’s maturity, a restrained might in its stance, elegant effortlessness in its abilities and a brutal superiority and self-confidence evident despite the veneer of graciousness.

Like its British brethren from Gaydon, the GT Speed would be welcome at the Casino Royale, but unlike the Aston it can mix it up in a street brawl and emerge from a body count with little more than bowtie in need of straightening.

It’s frighteningly easy to blast this Bentley down the road at phenomenal speeds. You become blasé about power and performance: ‘but of course it has over 600bhp dear boy.

It’s only when you find yourself arriving too suddenly at a bend or corner that you ponder the physics-defying feat of curtailing the momentum of a mass tipping the scales at 2350kg.

Fortunately the awesome carbon ceramic brakes do their fade-free job very well indeed, and help to ensure no skid marks are left on the tarmac or the seats.
The GT Speed is actually 35kg lighter than the regular Continental. But that’s not the only difference you’re paying an extra $10,000 for. Comparing the cars back to back at the Autodrome a few days later, the Speed is the flatter, more harder-edged car, feeling happier on the track than the rather alarmed GT.

The sport suspension and yaw control help, plus there’s a dynamic intermediate mode to the traction control which reduces interference, or you can disable it altogether for lurid tail-out nastiness. Steering is heavier and more responsive, and body control greatly improved.

The understeer attributes are still there though and ultimately it will just plough on with the over-application of power and a lack of a flick to imbalance it, but four-wheel drive ensures it remains safe.

You can even raise it up if you fancy a bit of dirt racing – or just a shortcut across gravel. Frankly, after you’ve driven the magnificent Speed hard, the ‘normal’ GT just won’t do.

Leaving a rumbling wake of W12 thunder dissipating from our path, our hyper-speed chariot arrived nonplussed and completely upstaged by an ancestor that appeared to have catapulted 77-years into the future.

The vintage Blower looked like a museum exhibit rolled outside temporarily for a bit of Spring cleaning. Surely this wasn’t going to be doing the 100km journey up the E44 back to Dubai under its own steam?

Commonly connected with American hot rodders, the phrase ‘there’s no replacement for displacement’ is originally said to have been uttered by an irate Walter Owen Bentley when his ‘Bentley Boys’, a band of aristocratic and flamboyant racers, suggested supercharging the 4½ litre, four-cylinder engines.

So they bought the company, and their most famed member, Le Mans 24 hours winner Sir Henry Birkin, convinced new chairman and fellow Bentley Boy, Woolf Barnato, to stick the AV supercharger up front (the only place it would fit).

Along with five racing cars, 50 road versions were built for homologation purposes. Ultimately WO had the last laugh as the thirstier more fragile blowers never won, but his 6½ litre cars did in 1929 and 1930.

GH 6951 was number 17 and like the others, was supplied as a chassis and engine to Birkin and Couper who bolted on the supercharger. It has a Vanden Plas four-seat tourer body – essentially a lightweight fabric over wood shell with folding roof.

The car served time as a demonstrator in London and passed through nine other owners before Bentley bought it back in 1997. Restored by Elmdown Engineering in 2000, it isn’t exactly mollycoddled, driven regularly and frequently touring around the world. Splendid.

Our pilot, Richard Charlesworth (Bentley’s director of Royal and VIP relations, and head of its heritage collection), revealed that very little has been done to keep the car going, a testament to the tough engineering and advance thinking of WO and the Boys.
It has a modern radiator and fan; the tyres shod on the 21-inch wheels look period, but are new and costly; a shield has been placed around the carburettors sitting alongside the Roots supercharger; and the pedal layout rearranged. And that’s about it.

Despite weighing nearly two tonnes, its 175bhp is enough to get it up to speeds of 170kph. The cacophony from the engine makes it very hard to maintain a conversation, and you are very exposed to the elements at the 130kph we maintained.

The lenses on my spectacles ended up badly pitted and scratched and my skin tingled with forced exfoliation.

The front seats are little more than stools with backs, the cabin was remarkably intimate for something almost the size of a 15-seater Toyota Hiace minibus, and the friction shock absorbers and leaf springs don’t like severe speed bumps but provided an astonishingly complaint and level ride with none of the bounce and flex I was expecting.

Needless to say the two-hour trip in the passenger seat wasn’t the most convivial, but at least I wasn’t working as hard as Charlesworth. He made it look remarkably easy, but a brief stint behind the wheel, put this at the top of my personal list of hardest cars I’ve ever driven.

Remarkably straightforward in theory, thanks to the now familiar pedal arrangement, and four-speed manual H-pattern open gait on the driver’s right – it takes practice and muscle.

A sticky little button serves as the accelerator and is hard to feather, but at least the clutch take-up is ordinary, so stalling is not too much of a concern. Changing gear was – the double-declutching I could live with, but on my first change I went from first to fourth. Thankfully the torque pulled it along easily.

Reaching down and manhandling the long-throw lever on my next couple of attempts did see successful engagement but then third gear proved elusive.

The nerve-wracking experience of crunching ancient gears on a vehicle worth over $3 million meant I threw the towel in, but not before I’d navigated a roundabout, and found the massive dustbin-lid sized steering still needed a Herculean effort to turn.

Plus you have to almost kick through the floor plate to coax the old drum brakes to stop the thing. All I could do was laugh hysterically the whole time at the thought of struggling so hard with a car that’s as old as my dad.

Later on, as Charlesworth powered through some tighter bends, ‘it’s the only way to keep the front from understeering’, I couldn’t help but think of those sturdy and brave Bentley Boys who raced these things for long periods.

Hats off indeed. I’m honoured to have had a glimpsed of what they did, having driven this piece of automotive history, but whilst the GT Speed will never match it for character, presence, majesty, emotional draw and indeed pedigree, I’ll take the Speed for distance-shrinking tours any time. And frankly, so should the new millennium James Bond.