Imagine, for a nanomoment, you're the doctor/lawyer/Indian chief your mom always wanted. Cash to burn, successful career on autopilot and the manse in Forest Hill finally mortgage-free, you're in the market for a new car, one that speaks to your success and station in the community. But, you're also in full mid-life crisis, sentimental for the tearaway youthfulness you now regret suppressing every time you open that second bottle of Chateau Lafite. Indeed, in your last act of impetuousness before children and creeping maturity reared their ugly heads, you owned an Aston Martin. Not one of these new namby-pamby ones, what with their button-down engineering and sophisticated electronics, but a real he-man-of-yesteryear Vantage with eight thundering pistons, a rock-crunching transmission and coil springs stiff enough to suspend the Golden Gate Bridge.
So, you head down to your friendly neighbourhood British luxury car dealership only to find that the Aston's oh-so-low seats that once gripped as you sported about now have you screaming about your arthritic back. As lovely as all sumptuous leather and V12 cacophony is, rampant lust is of no use if you can't climb into the bed. What to do? You certainly don't want to head to your friendly Audi, BMW or Mercedes dealers. Ruthlessly engineered their cars may be, but Teutonic efficiency is not nearly as welcoming as British warmth. Besides, everyone has an AMG or M5 parked in their garage and separating yourself from the herd is why you file all those litigious torts.
What about Bentley? Yes, there's an entire spate of German engineering to its underpinnings, but it's at least outfitted like a proper English motorcar. And, unlike the Aston, it's not nearly as hard on geriatric spinal columns. But that's to be expected, no? Bentleys, after all, are not nearly as sporty as Aston Martins.
That would have been true right up until, well, last week, when I popped into Grand Touring Automobiles, my local Aston/Bentley dealer, and spotted a brand new Continental Supersports conveniently tagged with dealer plates and no scheduled customer test drives for the next three days. For those unfamiliar with this latest Continental, the Supersports is, quite literally, the philosophical progeny of W.O. Bentley's famed monsters that dominated Le Mans during the 1920s.
Still an imposingly large car, the Supersports is shorn of such unnecessary luxuries as rear seats. The front seats, meanwhile, still clothed in leather, are now genuine race items made of Kevlar by Sparco. They don't even have electric adjusters. Yes, a $323,100 Bentley with the same manual seat adjustments as a $10,000 Hyundai.
But the changes do save weight. The seats alone are said to be 45 kilograms lighter. Throw in what Bentley claims are the largest carbon ceramic brakes on any production automobile as well some other little weight-savings tricks and you have a Continental that's 110 kg lighter..
That alone might not have warranted a Supersports moniker, but factor in an even more highly tweaked motor sporting six litres, 12 cylinders, two turbochargers and 621 horsepower and one is faced with a Bentley that thinks it's a Porsche. Indeed, that comparison is not at all spurious. Those still thinking that a Bentley is just an old man's car should know this -- the Supersports is only 0.3 seconds slower to 96 kilometres an hour than the 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo. Most of that minuscule advantage, I think, comes down to the Porsche's fancy electronic launch control system. The Supersports also tops out at a totally academic 329 km/h, but it's nice to have that in your back pocket just in case you ever have to race a 737 or a low-flying space shuttle.
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