[CAR ENGINES]
So it happened like this.
Bentley contacted me and said they'd lend me, very kindly, a
Continental GT Speed, the new 620-horsepower, very fast
version of the new Continental.
I said, yes, I'm sure we can do something
interesting with that.
Anyhow, last Friday I drove the car having spent the day
in the 599, and I really was surprised at how good it was
on the road.
The amount of performance you could put onto the road
service in any conditions, it was just, as I said,
impressive.
Next day I got up, and there happened to be a new Audi S4
on the driveway as well.
We get quite a few cars coming through, as you can imagine,
because cars are our job.
And I got in the Audi and I drove down the road.
And I suddenly thought, good lord, there are quite obvious
similarities between the way these cars drive, the way they
put their performance onto the road, the way the cabins feel,
some of the control ways.
This was odd.
But of course, it isn't odd, is it?
Because they're both owned by Volkswagen.
So what I want to do here is investigate the new GT Speed
and tell you what it's like to drive because it's
significance and it needs some air time.
But I also want to bring this Audi in and try and explore
the nature of driving characteristics and how these
increasingly large conglomerates are owning many
different brands but perhaps struggling to give those
brands real distinct identities
within the larger groups.
I mean, should an Audi S4 have anything in common with a
Bentley that costs 180,000 pounds?
I mean a bit of me says, no, it's absolutely wrong.
Then another bit of me says, hang on a minute, the S4 is
possibly the best car Audi makes.
So isn't that a real complement that the Bentley
can replicate some of those utterly seamless, absolutely
brilliant on-road characteristics.
Anyhow, here we go.
A strange investigation, but I hope a fun one.
It seems to be increasingly the case that engineers these
days can hide the mass of a vehicle very, very cleverly.
It's magic, isn't it?
This car weights 2.3 tons.
That's a vast amount of weight.
And yet because the steering is so accurate and the chassis
can put so much power onto the road, it
doesn't feel that heavy.
It must have some very, very clever spring and damper rates
as well because the ride is very compliant.
I know the mass helps that.
But it's not so lazy in direction changes as I thought
it would be.
It's quite agile.
You can make it go left right, left right, left right very
quickly and it follows the line.
You don't feel it getting away from you.
The motor, wow.
The torque, 590 foot pounds from well under 2000 RPM.
You don't even have to think about overtaking stuff.
You just squeeze the throttle and it goes.
It feels 620-horsepower strong as well.
Quite a bit of extra money.
But you get 50 horsepower over the standard car and over 70
foot pounds of torque as well more.
Does it feel like it has the performance of a
180,000 pound Super GT?
Abso-bloomin-lutely!
You can also nudge it into sport mode.
The exhaust starts to make more noise.
And then it kind of erupts down the road.
It's fast.
It doesn't have a double clutch gear box.
Eight speeds at half-automatic, which works
very, very well.
We're really learning to like and love this transmission.
But I think what's most impressive about this car is
the amount of composure and comfort it retains at high
speed over and above other cars in the class.
A Ferrari FF, a car which I'm not supposed to have driven,
is actually quite a bit busier at speed than this thing.
So dynamically, this is better than expected.
And I was very impressed that night when I drove it quickly
on some damp roads.
There's some winter tires there.
It seems to be the least affected car by going on
winter tires that I've driven.
There are very few cars that have managed to take turbo
charging and turn it into something that actually adds
character to a package.
Think of a few.
Some of the early Porche turbos, GT 2's,
definitely the F-40.
The F-40 is a more characterful car because it's
turbo-charged.
But this modern template for quite heavily turbo-charged,
smaller capacity engines and self-shifting gear boxes, I
think, is becoming a bit repetitive.
Sadly, like anything, these formulas, once they are deemed
to work well, just get copied and copied and copied.
So we end up in a situation where I think the Bentley
slightly comes undone because the power
train feels quite generic.
OK, it's not ordinary.
A W12 doesn't sound ordinary.
But there are some sort of synthesized voices going on.
Sometimes the car-- well the motor and the induction noise
is slightly odd.
You put it into sport and the exhaust makes a slightly self
conscious, sort of, woofly, almost breaking windy sound.
It's not really thoroughbred noise.
It doesn't harp back to anything in the past.
And it doesn't really excite me when I'm in the car.
OK, I'm not denying it's very, very effective.
But I don't think you get out of it with your spine tingling
in any way.
It really is such a shame that the Continental GT is saddled
with a slightly footballer-ish image because there really
isn't anything else quite like it.
This speed model is not far off 911 turbo-quick in a
straight line.
But it's quieter and more comfortable than
many an exec saloon.
And so it should be.
The double-glazed side windows mean the doors weigh about as
much as the Audi.
That's the whole Audi.
The quality in here is just sublime.
The knurled vent controllers, the gleaming chrome
everything, and the soft, waxy leather that smells expensive.
On one level, I think the Conty GT struggles to assert
itself over the more expensive BMWs and Mercs because it's
lacking a distinctive character.
But spend five minutes in the cabin,
and you'll be convinced.
It's miles more special than anything from a volume
manufacturer.
Of course, after the Bentley, the S4 feels about as
luxurious as Wright's Coal Tar Soap, but I like it that way.
It continues the understatement theme from the
ordinary exterior.
People just don't expect to see you smoke them.
And for that reason, I'd quite like to delete the quad tail
pipes that are the only real giveaway.
I've banged on about this particular car before because
I think it's the kind of unsung hero of
fast sporting Audis.
When they try and do RS cars, sometimes they go a bit too
far I think and get it wrong, but the S4 is
a real sweet spot.
Loads of torque, very fast on kind of
British wet, greasy roads.
Quick and fun as well.
Frugal.
I mean, it's a great balance of everything you'd want in a
smaller state car and so discreet.
This silver one, you can't even see the trinkety silver
wing mirrors over the normal body color.
It just looks so ordinary.
I think the wheels are actually smaller than on a
standard S-line model.
Anyhow.
I want to discuss the increased homogenization of
cars under one particular group, don't I?
And in this case it's the VW group.
I'm not singling them out because I want to get at them.
I just think it's a very interesting exercise.
I'm now sitting in a 40-something thousand pound
smaller state car.
It couldn't be further removed from the old
Benters back there.
I have a steering wheel which feels very similar in diameter
in my hands.
I've got two clock faces there.
I've got a computer screen around here.
I've got a lever right here.
And I've got a hand brake on or off switch just here.
Does that remind you of anything?
To me it does.
If I were to drive this blindfolded, the controls are
exactly where they are in the Bentley.
OK, the heated seats are down here in the Bentley and
they're up here on the Audi.
But it keeps on coming out.
It just feels quite same-y.
Do we have to have everything so similar?
What about the way the car performs?
Well, throttle weight is a little bit
lighter on this car.
That reads about right.
But the way the performance comes at me, the way that the
car will hold on to a gear to use the torque from this
rather clever supercharged V6, or just kick down a cog
imperceptibly and then just go with very little effort
whatsoever, that is definitely reminiscent of the Bentley.
If you were to define power characteristics in several
cars and maybe come up with five different definitions
from top end screamy VTEC-y style 4 cylinders and maybe
torque-y motors, this and the Bentley would definitely sit
in the same category.
It feels quite similar.
Does this mean that people from Audi drive Bentleys,
people from Bentley drive Audis, before they are all
released to the marketplace?
Well, we know for a fact that they do.
Is that information exchange a positive thing?
Or does it detract from the character of these cars?
That to me is a quite interesting point.
You might find it very dull, which I apologize.
I think the S4, particularly in silver, as I said, might be
the ultimate Q-car.
It's so discreet.
It looks so ordinary from the outside.
But when you want to go quite quick, it's got
plenty going for it.
Motor sounds good.
Rev sounds sweetly.
It's got loads of torque.
The one thing this car's got over the Bentley is that the
double clutch gear box in this car works especially well with
this supercharged engine.
So it's quick, quick, quick.
And the gear shifts are absolutely incisive.
Bang, you're into the next gear.
No, a clever thing, a clever thing.
So, am I actually paying the Bentley a massive complement
by saying it shares some driving characteristics with
an Audi that's worth a little bit more than the combined
total of the optional extras fitted to that GT speed?
Perhaps I am.
So this is where I stand on the subject.
On the one hand, I really appreciate the fact that cars
now drive in such a sophisticated manner.
That power trains are so easy and usable because of these
clever new gear boxes and because there are large groups
like VW that can allow their technologies and learnings to
cross-pollinate between different brands.
I think that's a great idea.
However, I think we have to mark a word of caution here.
I do think it makes some cars struggle for character.
And does it matter that an Audi S4 has not
got that much character?
I'm not sure it does.
It's a bit more of an appliance, isn't it?
To most people, it's a very expensive, very fast car.
I'll give you that.
But actually it's an A4 with a really potent engine.
And it's designed to just cross country quickly and kind
of integrate into someone's life imperceptibly.
So it doesn't matter that it's not bristling with character.
The Bentley, that's a bit more of a problem, isn't it?
Because even though that GT Speed does so many things so
well, even though I love spending time in it, oddly it
doesn't have a distinct character to me.
Ferrari FF has a distinct character.
But the Bentley, to me, it doesn't necessarily leap out
at me as being a Bentley.
It could be many things.
It could be a large Porche.
It could be a large Audi.
I know it's beautifully finished.
But it doesn't strike me at being obviously a Bentley.
And I think that is quite a dangerous thing.
The most difficult aspect of defining multiple brands whose
market space sometimes overlaps with each other and
which sometimes share many components is giving them a
distinct character.
That isn't a problem between these two cars because they're
priced so far apart from each other.
Much like that famous story of Aston Martin employee decades
ago deflecting accusations that using Ford switch gear
would upset owners.
He simply replied that it was doubtful any Aston owners had
actually sat in a modern Ford, so they would never know.
Well, the Speed and the Audi occupy different territories.
At times they feel spookily cut from the same cloth, but
mostly they just feel like very, very good cars.