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| Will the Flying Spur break the 200mph mark? |
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But what really sparked my interest was Bentley's claimed top speed for the car. I know the engineers up there pretty well and if they say the Flying Spur's top speed is 195mph, what they actually mean is under the worst weather and load conditions for high speed running, a Flying Spur with 552bhp will do 195mph. But, being Bentley, that 552bhp figure is also ultra-conservative: all engines are made to tight but nevertheless distinct manufacturing tolerances and 552bhp is the very least any Flying Spur engine will produce which, in itself, is more than can be said for any road Ferrari made today. Unofficially Bentley admits that the engines that happen to come together in the best possible way knock out in excess of 580bhp. That's about 100bhp more than James Hunt required to win the F1 world championship in 1976.
Even so, as I looked out over the acres of curving Bentley flesh as it stood in the pits awaiting its fate, I simply couldn't conceive that this vast, four door, 2.5 tonne saloon would soon be smashing its way through the hot Italian air at 200mph, least of all with me at the wheel.
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| Your car awaits... |
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I suddenly began to feel rather small. I'd only been to this amazing circuit once before, to take part in a 24-hour speed record attempt. That sounds rather intrepid until you learn that our chariot was a diesel-powered Chrysler Voyager with a top speed of, I think, 112mph. The only real challenge was staying awake. Conversely driving at high speed on the Millbrook speed bowl in the UK had kept me on my toes for many years when I was a cub road tester. As speed built so you had to turn ever harder into the corner to stop the car throwing itself clean off the track. If aerodynamic instability didn't set in first, then there was a good chance the suspension wouldn't be able cope and even if it could, you could not help wondering how long the tyres were going to last under that kind of strain. The Millbrook bowl is two miles round and I once lapped it at 175mph in a Ferrari 512TR getting myself into the Guinness Book of Records and onto first name terms with my dry cleaner all at the same time.
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