03 Sep 07
But something troubled me. The engineering team at Bentley has expanded massively since the GT was first launched, and they've come under the supervision of Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, as close to a visionary engineer as I know in this industry. One of his projects in a former employment was called the Ford Focus. I also felt that the type of roads I'd driven on and the uncommonly heavy traffic I'd met had perhaps not allowed the car to give a true account of itself. So the next day I pointed it at the mountains and, without wishing to sound indelicate, thrashed the pants off it.
Only then did I come to see the real difference all these changes had made. Where I'd have expected an old GT to float and wallow, the Speed hunkered down on its lowered suspension and attacked each successive corner with a hunger I'd never have suspected the day before. Suddenly the steering was talking to my fingers where yesterday it had been mute, and the confidence that comes only from being completely comfortable in a fine handling car came to me at once.
With roads as clear as they had been clogged the day before, I spent a memorable hour crossing the mountains at a thoroughly indecent speed for such a large and conspicuously heavy car. To say it transformed what I had earlier believed to be hard-set views is no exaggeration.
But once I'd climbed down from the mountains, questions once more queued up in my head and one in particular would not go away: should it really be necessary to drive this car that hard before it would behave as you'd hoped it would all along? The answer was not difficult to find.
