Driving the Bentley Flying Spur V8, the Meryl Streep of luxury haulers

Meryl Streep is widely regarded as the greatest dramatic actor of our time, praised, nominated, and awarded for her difficult roles in difficult films like Sophie’s Choice, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer and Silkwood. (And rightly so; we dare you to watch these movies without crying.) But Ms. Streep excels in lighter and more comedic fare, movies like Postcards from the Edge, Adaptation, and The Devil Wears Prada, all of which had us cackling wickedly into our popcorn.

Likewise, while Bentley is regarded as one of the greatest automakers of our time, and has recently been focused on distinguishing itself from that other British ultra-luxury brand — staking much of their strategy on racing heritage with sharply tuned accelerators like the indomitable W12-powered Continental GT and the re-launching of a winning GT3 race car—the crew from Crewe have also found a means to showcase their softer and more vulnerable side.

Whereas their GT coupe and Flying Spur sedan used to share a Continental prefix, these cars have now been fully separated, both nomenclaturally and mission-wise, regardless of which of the brand’s (and VW Group’s) family of engines is shoehorned into their chainmail-fronted snout.

We recently had the opportunity to sample a Bentley Continental GT V8 convertible in its topped out “S” guise. Herein, Audi’s vital twin-turbo 4-liter 8-pot produces 521 hp, enough to make this screaming ragtop feel — and more importantly, sound — like a $260,000 Camaro. It put us in mind of Meryl’s role in the burbling, one-degree-of-Kevin-Bacon action rafting flick The River Wild. Two words: Get rapid.

This same V-8, when lodged in the Flying Spur, is only off in output from that car by about four fists full of horsepower (21, to be precise) but its character could not be more different. Though it shares the coupe’s all-wheel-drive system and eight-speed transmission, to mis-paraphrase Willie Dixon, It’s built for comfort, it ain’t built for speed. (Though with a 0-60 time of 4.9 seconds, and a 183 mph top speed, it’s also kind of built for speed.)