Bentley V8 Spur vs W12: Beyond the Cylinders, Decoding the Heart of Luxury
With fewer cylinders and less power, the spec sheet says it’s a step down. But savour the V8’s torque to see why it’s a clever marketing move
On paper there seems little point in considering this new 4-litre V8 version of the Bentley Flying Spur over its extant 6-litre W12 big brother. It costs about £10,000 less, but in Bentley-land you pay that much to equip your car with fancy ceramic brakes. What you lose is not just two litres and four cylinders but a whole 116bhp, once enough to power an entire hot hatchback. Now with a trifling 500bhp, this is the least-powerful Bentley you can buy, yet at 2425kg it is still massively heavy and indeed a mere 50kg lighter than the apparently far better value 12-cylinder car. It does, just, get under the limit for top-rate excise duty, but you’ll still pay £860 in your first year and £485 thereafter for your virtual tax disc.
But the V8 Spur is nothing like the weak link its specification suggests – and this is why. For good or for bad but certainly for sound commercial reasons, the current Flying Spur is a car designed more for those in the back than the front. This is where most Chinese owners will sit and this is where Bentley sells most Spurs, one reason why the largest Bentley dealership in the world is in Beijing rather than Los Angeles or London. It is not a driver’s car and so long as Bentley continues to produce other machinery that is rewarding to drive, I have no problem with that.
What profit, then, is there in having the 12-cylinder engine? To many it will simply be a desire to show you have not had to settle for second-best, for what other reason could there be for choosing the V8? Plenty, as it turns out.