The big Bentley starts to understeer, then understeer some more. Soon the vast, overheating and overwhelmed Pirellis are howling in agony and protest. On this tight and demanding circuit the Bentley feels as out of place as a walrus on a dog track. Who thought it any kind of idea to launch a new Bentley at a place like this, even if it is meant to be the most sporting, best handling Bentley in years? It is purest folly and the only things that should be rolling more than this poor car are the heads of those responsible for bringing it here.
What a difference 40 years makes. The above is not my considered view of the way the new Bentley Supersports behaves here at Laguna Seca, but my imagining of what some journalists must have been thinking when, back in 1986, they went to the then-new Hungaroring where Bentley was launching the Turbo R, a great galleon of a car with better roadholding than a stock Mulsanne Turbo, hence the ‘R’. The use of the word ‘better’ in this context being the same as me saying my Spanish is better my dog’s.
It is interesting to note that any journos thinking along the lines outlined above would, in fact, have been entirely wrong. Look at Bentley sales figures of the era and they show the Turbo R to be a transformational product for the brand, spearheading a charge that in short order saw demand for Bentleys far outstrip that of Rolls-Royce which had hitherto been far and away the more successful of the two conjoined brands. It is unlikely the new Supersports will be seen the same way, not least because the brand no longer needs transforming, but also because there’ll only ever be 500 built. But if the fact they all sold out at £342,900 a pop before anyone outside the factory slipped behind its leather-lined wheel doesn’t give them pause for thought about what a lot of people want a Bentley to be, I’ll eat my string-backed driving gloves.
