Start with what the Bentley Continental Flying Spur is: a 4-door saloon with 6.0 L W12 twin-turbo, built from 2005, in the decade of stability control, dual-clutch gearboxes and the first serious hybrids. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Dirk van Braeckel (2001).
The story
The Bentley Flying Spur, known as the Bentley Continental Flying Spur before 2013, is a full-sized luxury car produced by Bentley Motors Limited since 2005. It is the four-door saloon variant of the Bentley Continental GT two-door coupé.
The Flying Spur is assembled by hand at Bentley's factory in Crewe, England. Briefly, due to lack of capacity at the Crewe factory upon the car's introduction, 1,358 units of the first generation Flying Spur destined for markets other than the United States and United Kingdom were built at parent-company Volkswagen's Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany. This arrangement ended in early 2007, when all assembly works reverted to Crewe.
What is underneath
The engine is 6.0 L W12 twin-turbo. On the scales it comes to 2475 kg. Drive goes through a 6-speed ZF 6HP26A tiptronic automatic. The wheelbase is 3065 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
In the Bentley line-up the Bentley Continental Flying Spur has a clear place: the factory was Crewe (Bentley Crewe), United Kingdom. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Bugatti Veyron, the Kia Sportage, the Aston Martin Vantage. Nearby in the Bentley catalogue sit the Armoured Arnage and the Bentley 3 Litre.
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