Bentley Continental Supersports

How can a car that’s so wrong feel so right?

This week, please meet the ultimate snowtime accessory. It’s finished in white, it has four-wheel drive and it costs £163,000.

Were it not for the glistening metal of the dark-smoked stainless-steel fittings, rendered thus by “physical vapour deposition”, a process also used in replacement hip joints, this Bentley could almost disappear into the background. Which is not a Bentley-like thing to do at all.

But these are special circumstances of weather. And they don’t mean that global warming is a myth. When climate sensibilities return to normal, this sleek, white Bentley will become more visible and those who abhor what it stands for will be more vocal.

What it stands for is this. It is the fastest road-going Bentley ever, and the fastest Bentley full stop apart from the victorious Le Mans racing cars of 2003 (which, arguably, were more Audi than Bentley). This Continental Supersports weighs less than the regular GT Coupé or the slightly quicker Speed version, so now it’s two and a quarter tonnes instead of two and a half, and has yet more power from its 6.0-litre, W12, twin-turbo engine. This engine is effectively two narrow-angle V6s next to each other, sharing possibly the most intricately machined crankshaft I have seen.

How much power? The standard GT makes do with 552bhp. The Supersports has 621bhp, with a similarly epic 590lb ft of torque all the way from 1,700 to 5,600rpm. This is a veritable torrent of energy; how appropriate that Bentley’s head of engines should be called Brian Gush.

True, there is the matter of 388g/km CO2 emissions, but the company’s conscience is assuaged by making the Supersports able to run on biofuel – even the most-bio blend, which is 85 per cent ethanol – with all engine calibrations able to happen automatically and unnoticeably. This, contends Bentley in a fine piece of car-maths, reduces the Supersports’ carbon footprint by up to 70 per cent because much of the CO2 is simply putting back what the fuel crops took from the air in the first place.

That’s fine if “E85” fuel is readily available, which in the UK it isn’t, and if devoting vast acreages to biofuel crops were viable, which it probably isn’t while the world’s population is increasing. But I digress. Leave the eco-baggage behind for a moment, and consider the car.

I wanted to drive it the second I saw it. Bentley began life as a maker of big-engined sports cars which were good enough to win Le Mans in the 1920s, and the Supersports (a name first used in 1925) is the most sportingly focused, most extreme Bentley in years – or ever. Where you would expect wood and leather on the dashboard, we find carbonfibre and Alcantara mock-suede. There’s still plenty of leather elsewhere, but it clads carbonfibre-shelled front seats with – shock! – manual adjustment. Resetting the seat height is a spanner job. There are no rear seats, just a storage bay.

Outside, bigger air intakes and a pair of bonnet vents to let the now-heated air out again set a potent tone, while the rear wings are widened to cover broader, lighter wheels with skeletal spokes painted a menacing black. There’s a single-mindedness about this car undistracted by notions of opulence and cossetting; the value is in the care taken to make the Supersports the supercar it effectively is.

I start the engine: a deep, metallic, busy burble issues aft. I nose into a road not yet scuppered by excess snow, and I am relieved because despite the all-wheel drive, now with the majority of the engine’s efforts sent to the rear wheel, this Continental’s wide, ultra-low-profile, 200mph-plus-capable tyres would not be much use on the slippery white powder. Nor would a 204mph top speed, or a 3.9-second time to 62mph.

The power is not so much bombastic as relentless. You’re not pulverised into the seats, merely forced there and held there. The gearbox is a six-speed automatic but tuned to make near-instant, very tight manual shifts if you use the paddles, and it automatically blips-up the engine revs as you downshift – as a Ferrari does, for example.

Yet this is still a civilised, aristocratic car. The steering is quick and precise and the ride can be firm if you set it thus, all thanks to the Supersports’ thorough tightening of sinews. So it’s very wieldy for something so hefty, although it pays to remember that the wide rear wheels stick out further than you think. (Yes, I scraped a rim.)

I’m glad Bentley has made this car. The regular Continental inhabits a part of the motoring universe alien to what I love about cars. But the Supersports looks like a proper driving machine, and it is. Two and a quarter tonnes, though … no car should be as heavy as that. Even a Bentley.

The Rivals

Aston Martin DBS: £166,872

Six litres and 12 cylinders here, but no turbos so ‘only’ 510bhp. Same pared-down, motorsport feel as the Bentley, no comfort in Sport mode.

Ferrari 599 GTB HGTE: £207,194

Another 6.0-litre V12; matches Bentley’s output with high engine speeds rather than turbos. HGTE has sharp handling, rides well, feels fab.

Porsche 911 GT3: £81,914

You want hardcore? It’s here in a 911 built for ultimate driver interaction. Manual gears, 435bhp, a torrent of stimuli. Maybe the best buzz on sale.