Gadgetory

Bentley's exist in a different world than the one you and I live in a world where people buy a 50 thousand dollar watches that don't tell time as well as a $200 I phone and we're a town house on wheels like this can be called a sports sedan with a straight face but if you want to arrive more refreshed than when you started your drive there are about 2 or 3 cars in the world to consider and this is one of them let's try the 2014 Bentley Flying Spur and check the tech now the 2014 Flying Spur is this big curvy bastard that has got mostly an aluminum body shell which helps keep its courtliness manageable beyond that spot one buy it's very different new taillights also a different mass front and rear compared to the Mulsanne we drove recently it's got a much more reduced schnoz and a flatter cut off run now inside a Bentley it's nicer than your house that's kind of the idea genuine materials everywhere leather and real wood of course real metal in places I've seen these before these are what they call their organs stop vent knobs and in fact all they are is electric switches but they are dampened to feel like mechanical plungers if I recall correctly in the center of those gauges you've got a fairly familiar outie ask sort of a helper screen in there and of course over here is the main head unit which I appreciate because it has nice big touch zones in other words the buttons not a fiddly little detailed thing that's a nuance lost on many automakers now down here in the drive control centre we basically are faced with our shifter and some suspension settings there's not a whole lot of other drive mode controls even though this car has a massive high-tech powerplant in terms of our shifter it's a one choice only gearbox on this guy an 8-speed automatic with your Drive position Sport position and traditional gate to the side nothing unusual there look at these chunky shifters up here of these paddles on the steering column my great about those is they don't extend down only up so you got to heat your hands up here to get to the shifters it's interesting how cars that cost a ton of money tend to insult you the most for example on this Bentley as far as I understand it that rear camera is optional you're kidding right and over here on the headlight control I don't see an automatic setting that apparently is optional - or not available I don't believe that once you do pony up for that rear camera you do have a ton of settings on it though from angle of view to color and contrast you'll see that very often and of course your sonar can be in or out the map quality is is good it's not cutting edge or not doing anything here I've not ever seen before you notice though it's got a good response I'm dragging around the map in this case for example and it's really responsive so there's some good processing or optimization in here now in terms of the output we have the basic sound system here probably one of the best you've ever heard it does sound really good to my ears there is an optional name audio nai M that is over the top using 1100 watts through 13 digital channels into what are called balanced mode radiators they're round flat panel speakers that have much better imaging because they don't aim treble frequencies like a rifle shot they disperse them more broadly so goes the science one other thing I find this beautiful sunglass holder quite a work of art and engineering it's really quite nice I'd have liked to have seen as much time spent on some kind of new universal smartphone holder instead you just throw it in the console up here like you do on any Toyota even on our low option Flying Spur the rear compartment is just a beautiful place to spend time down here this fixed or a detachable touchscreen remote is impressive you can run the front head unit from it or echo the speedometer or other driver readouts and have all sorts of fun with climate seat comfort and the rear power sunshade you can also equip the boudoir back here with the usual dopey DVD entertainment system or a sort of inexplicable 64 gigabyte in-car storage drive for who knows what good purpose do you see what's happening there in the video being shot right now that's the view fun you're looking at right now of our main camera see how it's doing this stuff I've never seen that happen before in the eight years have been shooting these videos there's something radiating out of this car I think I'm getting out now up here underneath the prow we have an engine more akin to locomotive technology than automotive this is a six liter twin turbo w12 it nests cylinders so that you can have 12 of them in a much smaller longitudinal distance it's kind of like nesting 2v sixes though that's not exactly right the bottom line here is remarkable performance for a big boy this is a fat man who can dance zero to 60 and 4.3 seconds that's almost 5500 pounds of car before you even get in it and the mpg is sort of kind of not bad 13 city and 28 highway 19 average but you do get hit with a $3,000 gas-guzzler tax now driving this big boy you're not sure if you should be wearing black tie a chauffeurs cap or train conductors overalls I mean it's a extremely formal environment in here at the same time you feel like you're really wasting that back seat if no one is sitting in it and at the same time you're also dealing with pro digis powers so it's an interesting mix of experiences now the first thing that bothers me about this car and again it's pre-production they may iron this out is the throttle response is really annoying initial tip in is basically numb then you get a ton of power it's very tedious to drive this car in everyday traffic get into sport mode or manually shift it and you really get some amazingly nice effortless power as you might expect now about these suspension modes I'm in let's see full comfort right now it's very comfortable in terms of the actual vehicle body dynamics but underneath that I'm getting a harsh undertone of a lot of Road chatter I don't find it as luxurious as it should be again that may be tuned up by the time this car is in full production trim I suspect it will otherwise I think I get a better ride out of a garden-variety lexus l asked to be honest okay let's price our 2014 Flying Spur just for sport starts off at 206 or so because the base car has a $2,800 delivery charge and as I mentioned a $3,000 gas-guzzler tax then you begin to add some packages and some options to get it seen that style here's what I would do rear camera and insulting 1200 bucks wired phone handset I love that idea thousand dollars rear multimedia system I'd pass all day long but it's 7300 if you happen to have kids a panoramic glass roof with a solar passive cooling technology that's a grand I would do that all day long 7,500 bucks for the name audio system yeah this one sounds pretty good just like it is so all in year easily into the two 20s and you can go to a quarter million without really breathing hard bottom line it buys you a four-door sedan Bentley that's got more of the DNA of the hotter Continental GT models more horsepower more torque more gears more wheels driven fewer seconds to 60 you