MOTORING ALAN JUDD BABY BENTLEY
A hazard of motoring correspondency is that you are invited to car launches and put up in hotels that spoil you for anything else. You may also be confronted with the kind of technological assault course that, a couple of years ago in Munich’s palatial Bayerischer Hof, left me naked before a plate-glass window with electric curtains I couldn’t close, lights I couldn’t turn off and a television that kept demanding money for a porn channel I didn’t want. The car, by comparison, was simplicity itself. Actually, it was highly complex beneath the skin but, being a Bentley, was too well mannered to show it. It was the latest version of their 2.3 tonne ‘baby’, the two-door Continental Speed. VW, Bentley’s owners since 1998, have proved good stewards, imposing manufacturing standards that mean their products – still made at Crewe – are more reliable than ever. Prototypes are left in deserts or on icecaps to see whether veneers peel, glues melt, leather warps or windscreens crack. This particular model was subjected to bench tests of 4,000 hours at full throttle, along with gearbox, suspension and aerodynamic adjustments to make it safe at very high speeds. That’s necessary because the 6-litre W12 engine offers 616 horsepower, 590 lb-ft torque and a top speed of 205mph – at least. Bentley is famously conservative in its published figures and the 21-inch Pirelli tyres are rated to 218mph. The physics of making a car go that fast are awesome: every second at 200mph you’re putting 4,000 litres of air through the radiator and using eighty per cent of your energy just to push the rest of the air away, which means that every extra mph requires an exponential increase in power. You have to remember The two-door Bentley Continental Speed
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to stop, too, and the expensive carbon ceramic brakes, an option guaranteed for the lifetime of the car, were reassuringly willing, with no fade. Since launch in 2003, the Continental has proved a marque-saving brand for Bentley, selling more than 26,000 in its first decade to a wider, younger and more female market demographic. Seventy-nine per cent of these buyers were new to the brand, including – at first – Manchester United players and their Wags. Too heavy to be a true sports car, it is a very fast grand tourer with a sumptuous yet uncluttered interior that cossets and comforts you, and – importantly – beautifully finished switches and dials that everyone can understand. Unlike some other supercars, it can be used as an everyday car, as reliable and unruffled in town as at speed. It’s attractive but not quite beautiful. The rear – usually the most difficult bit to get right – has been softened since the early editions but it still bulks large. In profile, though, those muscular rear haunches convey an alluring impression of contained power, a big cat waiting to spring. But it looks – and is – wellbehaved, with nothing flash. If anything, it’s slightly understated. It has long been my ambition to drive at 200mph but the autobahn between Munich and the tourist-thronged Führer’s lair at Berchtesgaden (curious choice for a German-owned car company) was a little crowded, so we crawled along in our diamond-quilted seats at a modest 140mph. At that speed it’s uncannily quiet and the faster you go the more solidly planted it feels. Who buys them? Mostly foreigners – Americans, Russians and Chinese, with new dealerships opened last year in Mexico, Canada and Australia – but we austerity-ridden Brits can still manage the odd ten per cent annual increase. Latest price is £156,700, a nanosecond’s worth of government borrowing. If it’s all right for them, it must be all right for us. Mustn’t it?
HOME FRONT ALICE PITMAN my screen debut
THERE is a famous Charles Addams New Yorker cartoon depicting roaring caged lions about to be released onto the set of a Roman colosseum. Behind the scenes, a movie extra dressed as a Christian slave looks up from reading and enquires of his similarly attired colleagues, ‘Holy smoke, have you guys seen this script?’ Those words came into my head when I read my son Fred’s first short film screenplay (starring the Home Fronts). Fred had arrived back from university clutching a copy of Truffaut’s book on Alfred Hitchcock and announcing he wanted to be a director. He pestered Mr Home Front to bring back a camera from work and they both disappeared to his bedroom for many hours. Eventually they emerged – looking a bit shifty – with a ten-page treatment. Fred bossily informed us that it would feature the whole family (including Lupin the dog) and that he would film and direct. The synopsis of this modern gothic suburban horror is as follows: Man (played with disconcerting enthusiasm by Mr Home Front) comes home on Christmas Eve and murders his wife (me). The End. Fred smiled uncertainly as I read it, then said: ‘So are you all right with that then, Mummy?’ The script directions were uncomfortably close to home (The Woman helps herself to another large glass of wine); the dialogue all too familiar (Woman to Man: You make me sick. I’m going to bed). So I decided to channel my inner Bette Davis to invest the role with an additional layer of pathos. Fred turned out to be quite a formidable director, unafraid to confront both parents when he felt we were over-acting (which seemed to be the entire time). As Mr HF and I kept trying to outdo each other like a couple of spiteful old hams in rep, Fred would stop filming, cry ‘Cut!’; then, after a devastating pause: ‘You’re telling him what you did with your day, not delivering the Gettysburg Address.’ Then there was the matter of the murder weapon. Mr Home Front favoured a hatchet. I pointed out that not only was this disturbing and extremely unpleasant, it was too unsubtle. People are sick of blood and gore, I told him.