FiestaST
Honorary Master
Autocar review of the 2021 Flying Spur V8
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Overview
What is it? Handsome, isn’t it? Check out the proportions: the sense that the front wheels have been pulled forward, the windscreen sloping back in sympathy, the way it sits on its wheels. In profile it’s a bloody good bit of design. We’ve never been able to say that about a Flying Spur before.
Well, not since the badge first appeared on a four-door back in 1957. It was an element of Design Director Arthur Taylor Johnstone’s heraldic crest that gave the car its name.
The plate came back in 2005, adorning a saloon version of the Continental GT. It wasn’t a looker, yet Bentley sold 37,000 of them.
The trouble was that the last-generation Flying Spur, even after it was facelifted in 2013, was a car for the driven, not the driver. It both looked and felt too nose heavy. Better to sit in the back.
This second-gen car changes that. Particularly if you choose the ‘entry’ V8. This isn’t ‘entry’ level like you get at Dacia, the bumpers blackened and stereo yanked out. This is a skinnier, sharper and only mildly less powerful car than the top-rung W12.
Whichever you choose, it’s longer and wider than before while lighter, too. Crucially, the axles are now 130mm further apart, the chassis (all-new and all-aluminium, so too the bodywork) features a five grand optional 48-volt electric system that manages an active anti-roll bar and four-wheel steering.
The four-wheel-drive system is more rear-biased, the gearbox is not a regular automatic but an eight-speeder with twin clutches.

Reading this, I have to wonder if any more “potentially affected fuel tanks” were shipped to other carmakers, where they would have wound up in — I assume — a great many more cars.Supplier production records were analyzed to identify potentially affected fuel tanks. Only one affected fuel tank was shipped to Bentley Motors. Using vehicle production records, the affected vehicle has been identified.































