2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed Review: Gentleman Speedster

The near-$260k price of the 2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed makes it a very expensive car - but it's a very special one that's worthy of asking for that much money. Bentley will be putting its stalwart W12 engine out to pasture in April 2024, and the Flying Spur Speed comes only with the W12 - it's one of the last cars still available today with a 12-cylinder engine. With 626 horsepower and a top speed of 207 mph, it delivers sports-car performance figures from a haven of upper-crust luxury, and is customizable to your wildest wishes. Likeminded rivals are few, but one can imagine the $235k Mercedes-Maybach S in S680 V12 format vies for a slice of the same pie. The Rolls-Royce Ghost Black Badge has a V12 too, but more of a luxury focus - at a premium of $150k over the Bentley. In the Speed, buyers aren't only getting the best of Bentley, but a piece of 12-cylinder history; it stays true to the Bentley brief of building super-luxury cars for spirited drivers.

New for 2023

For 2023, the performance-focused Flying Spur Speed makes a return to the range. It is exclusively fitted with a twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter W12 engine and, since the standard Flying Spur dropped the W12 engine, the Speed is now the only way to get it without opting for the Mulliner. In the Speed, the engine develops 626 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque, while the car also gets multiple Speed logos, 22-inch alloy wheels, and blacked-out exterior trim.

The price of the new Bentley Flying Spur Speed is just under $260k - almost $60k less than the Mulliner W12. An even more exclusive 650-hp 2024 Flying Spur Speed Edition 12 is lining up as a final sendoff for the venerable W12. Elsewhere in the lineup, the S trim debuts, but you can read all about that in our review of the standard Flying Spur.

2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed Price: Which One to Buy

The high price of the 2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed sets it apart for the well-heeled. It goes on sale in the USA at an MSRP of $258,700 - around $50k more than the base V8 Flying Spur. This price doesn't include Bentley's destination charge, which will add an additional $2,725 to the cost of the car.

In a car like this, where money is no object, it's all about personalization, and Bentley gives you endless options to do just that. We can't imagine anyone buying a 'basic' Speed, with most buyers taking their time poring over the exterior and interior color combinations, the different types of leather and available woods, and the multiple other options available courtesy of the Bentley Mulliner customization program. If you have the means to buy an expensive piece of automotive history like this, you might as well personalize it to the nth degree. On a practical level, we'd add at least the Touring Specification to get the missing driver assists, such as adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist, a head-up display, and night vision.

Interior and Features

The hushed interior cossets its passengers and offers good, if not ample, space, nailing both the luxury and sporty briefs with aplomb.

Bentley has not relegated everything to touchscreens, so you're presented with classy analog gauges, high-quality metal switches, and natural materials such as leather and wood everywhere you look. Cabin quality is of super-luxury standard, with not a single cheap surface, switch, or piece of hard plastic to be found anywhere inside. You can personalize the cabin to your heart's desire, with endless colors and material choices available, along with extra equipment and even a touchscreen that rotates out of sight in the middle of the dashboard. Because it's a sportier trim, the seat centers are covered in faux-suede Dinamica Pure, which contains 73% recycled polyester, with both front and rear seats electrically adjustable, heated, and ventilated, with massaging for the front pews. The interior space is decent, and standard parking sensors and a surround-view camera will help you park the Speed.

Space

The 125.75-inch wheelbase leaves plenty of room between the Speed's axles for a spacious cabin, and even the rear seat is roomy, both in terms of leg- and headroom. It's similar to the Ghost in the second row, but neither can get close to the enormous legroom offered by the Maybach S with its near-134-inch wheelbase.

Cargo

One would imagine that a Speed owner would send Jeeves ahead with the luggage in the Bentayga, but it's still a bit disappointing that the Flying Spur's trunk space is only 14.83 cubic feet - a low figure considering the size of the car. To be fair, the Maybach S has a paltry trunk volume of only 12.3 cu-ft, so the Bentley is hardly the worst in this class. For the record, the Ghost's 17.7 cu-ft cavern dwarfs both.

Cabin storage isn't very generous. There's a glovebox and the obligatory cupholders front and rear, but the door pockets aren't very big, and, surprisingly, the center console doesn't flip up to reveal storage space, though there is storage in the rear seat's fold-down armrest. There's a handy front-cabin wireless charging pad, and one can be specified for the rear as well, along with veneered fold-down picnic tables that nestle in the front seatbacks.

Materials and Colors

By default, the Speed comes with extended leather on many of the cabin's surfaces, including the seats, but with seat centers in Dinamica Pure, a faux suede material. All the wood and metal finishes and surfaces you see are real, and you can customize the environs endlessly. You can replace the Dinamica with leather by ticking the Leather Specification box, and you have access to countless interior colors. There are different colors for the split main and secondary hides, available in more than 10 hues, including regular ones such as Magnolia, Portland, Newmarket Tan, Burnt Oak, and Imperial Blue, as well as Mulliner shades such as Mandarin and Pillar Box Red. You can opt for contrast stitching, contrast carpet binding, embroidered emblems, and various steering-wheel leathers and colors.

For the trim pieces, the single-finish wood veneers include choices such as open-pore Koa, dark-stained Burr Walnut, and dark Fiddleback Eucalyptus, but you can also opt for dual-finish Mulliner veneers over Grand Black as a secondary color. Of course, sportier finishes such as high-gloss carbon fiber, piano black, and engine-turned aluminum are also on offer. The Mulliner Color Specification brings in a host of additional interior accent colors, including extroverted choices such as Cherry Blossom and Cyber Yellow. There are so many combinations, that you can spec your Speed in a configuration that makes it entirely unique to any other.

Features and Infotainment

In its role as super-luxury conveyance with a need for speed, no expense has been spared to equip the Speed to best do its job. The seats are superbly supportive, with 24-way front and 12-way rear power adjustment, massaging in front, and heating and ventilation for both front and rear seats. You naturally get keyless go and real wood, leather, and metal finishes, while the climate control is of the four-zone variety and equipped with an air ionizer. Standalone extra-cost options include items such as a rear-seat wireless charging pad, a fridge, a panoramic roof, and a parking heater, but you can also add packages - called Specifications by Bentley - such as the Mood Lighting or Diamond Knurling Specification, the latter rendering many of the metal surfaces and switches in this type of finish.

The infotainment system comes with a 12.3-inch touchscreen and, if you specify the Bentley Rotating Display, the touchscreen becomes one of three rotating surfaces so you can swivel it out of the way. The second surface displays an analog compass, outside temperature and chronograph gauges, and the third is a veneer panel for a minimalist look. The system incorporates Wi-Fi, Apple CarPlay, and a ten-speaker audio system, but you pay extra for a TV tuner, a rear-seat entertainment system with dual 10.1-inch screens, and a choice of upgraded audio systems, including a 1,500-W Bang & Olufsen for Bentley setup with 16 speakers and a 2,200-W Naim setup with 19 speakers and two shakers.

Performance

The powertrain goes about its business discreetly, but delivers a knock-out punch, though you’ll have to tweak the exhaust settings to hear it work.

The cliched description of a steel fist in a velvet glove is apt for the engine in the Bentley Flying Spur Speed - a hand-assembled twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter W12 with 626 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque. The big 12-cylinder produces gobs of bottom-end torque and effortless, hushed performance, driving an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and standard all-wheel drive - the only available drivetrain. The adaptive exhaust control helps you hear the bassy soundtrack of the engine a little better, but it's always discreet, if devastatingly effective. It gives the Bentley Flying Spur Speed a 0-60 sprint of only 3.7 seconds - far ahead of its Mercedes-Maybach and Rolls-Royce rivals - on to a hugely impressive top speed of 207 mph. Other hardware includes adaptive air suspension with Bentley Dynamic Ride electrically adjusted stabilizer bars, a brake-based torque-vectoring system, and rear-axle steering.

All this techno-wizardry delivers quite the knock-out punch, and the Speed behaves like a much smaller car in the way it turns in, tightens the line on corner exit as the AWD shuttles torque rearward, and hauls down that enormous weight from high speeds time and time again, thanks to preposterously large 16.5-inch front brake rotors. Body control is iron-fisted and the rear-axle steering helps it rotate into corners with uncanny agility for something so big and heavy. The active stabilizer bars (energized by a 48-V power supply) keep the big car flat in corners but slacken off to provide superb ride comfort, despite the firmly damped underlying feel one would expect from a Bentley. You hear more than feel the big tires thump over divots, but noise, vibration, and harshness are kept where they belong - outside the cabin.

Fuel Efficiency

In the interest of improved gas mileage, the 6.0-liter engine can shut down six of its 12 cylinders under part-throttle demand, so the Bentley Flying Spur Speed's mpg figures aren't quite as terrible as the output figures and the car's 5,600-pound weight might suggest. It touches 19 mpg on the EPA's highway cycle, but the dismal 12 mpg city figure keeps the combined consumption to a thirsty 15 mpg. Whereas in other markets the car has a 19.8-gallon fuel capacity, US models come with a 23.78-gallon gas tank, which should be good for a range of around 356 miles.

Safety

No crash scores are available and the standard driver assists are limited, but the missing ones can be added via the Touring Specification.

Expensive luxury cars such as this aren't crash-tested, so you won't find an NHTSA or IIHS safety review of the Bentley Flying Spur Speed, or any other Bentley, for that matter. But modern technology - and its huge weight - should ensure that it holds up as well as anything in a crash.

Bentley hasn't been particularly generous with the standard driver assists, though, and you only get a surround-view camera, rain-sensing wipers, automatic LED headlights, front and rear parking sensors, and road sign recognition as standard. The extra-cost Touring Specification adds adaptive cruise control with stop & go, lane-departure warning with lane-keep assist, a head-up display, and night vision.

Reliability

There are no reliability stats for the Bentley Flying Spur Speed - JD Power or otherwise - because there are simply too few of them around. There are no recalls on record for the 2023 Speed, and the regular Flying Spur was recall-free at the time of writing.

The limited warranty of the 2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed is valid for three years/unlimited miles, the same as the powertrain warranty. Complimentary servicing for one year/10,000 miles is included as well.

Warranty

Design

The Flying Spur Speed is a luxury performance sedan, and it looks the part. Speed highlights include 22-inch alloys, jewel-like dark-tinted LED head- and taillights, and a darkened grille finish. Self-leveling Bentley badges on the wheels are also available. An enormous range of exterior colors can be specified, with black, blue, green, silver, and a host more palettes to choose from, and the wheels can be had in Dark Tint, gloss black, or silver. Duo-tone Mulliner paintwork can be selected as well. Speed badging adorns the fenders. The Bentley Styling Specification brings high-gloss carbon fiber to the exterior for the spoiler, splitter, diffuser, and sills, and the Blackline Specification blacks out the window surrounds, wing vents, bumper trim, exhausts, head- and taillights bezels, door handles, and more. A glass panoramic roof is available as well.

Verdict: Is The 2023 Bentley Flying Spur Speed A Good Car?

Judging the merit of an expensive luxury sedan is difficult to do objectively, but if you want 12 cylinders while you can still get it, your choices are distinctly limited. The 2023 Flying Spur Speed best fulfills the sporting brief, offering better agility, performance, and driver enjoyment than its Ghost or Maybach rivals. For the sporting driver who enjoys being driven just as much as they enjoy taking the helm themselves, the Speed is perhaps the finest car of its ilk around. It's not as spacious or comfort-oriented as the other contenders, but the way in which it delivers the age-old Bentley sporting flair while remaining a consummate executive sedan is absurdly satisfying.