Bentley Brooklands review

You might worry that driving the Brooklands would puncture the aura of its designer thug bodywork. That underneath its stately charm and raffish handsomeness, it would be a boat, creaky in the middle like many pillarless coupes and as embarrassingly vulgar as gold-tipped driveway gates leading to mock Greek pillars.

But it’s fabulous. You have this vast metal shell draped around you, 16 cow hides, more torque than a tunnel boring machine, and it’s all yours. The sense of superiority – of invincibility – is profoundly addictive.

So what’s it like to drive?

Tauter in the ride than you might expect, because this is a semi-sporting luxury express, not a magic carpet. Bentleys have to tread that line of being less wafty than a Rolls-Royce but never as rigid as the Germans settle for. And the Brooklands nails it.

The powertrain is curious. It’s like driving some sort of enormous Royal Navy destroyer. It doesn’t feel very fast, but there’s an enormous sense of deep, unmitigated power and without any drama it accrues huge speed. It’s undramatic under throttle, but deeply, hilariously potent. The turbos, incidentally, are from Mitsubishi. Bizarre really. This thing is about as far away from an Evo as you can get.

You do need to be aware of the torque delivery. It’s nothing like any other car. At a little over 1,000rpm this beast is churning out 774lb ft, which is easily enough to overwhelm the rear tyres somewhere back in a distant postcode. And the 2000s-spec traction control isn’t going to be much help in that regard. The trick is not to ‘jump’ on the throttle. Gently does it.

Does it stop? And handle?

The brakes feel like they’re from the Winter of Discontent and we’re glad that modern uber-lux barges have rear-steer so you don’t need all of Staffordshire to turn around in once you’ve overrun Cheshire attempting to stop. But HMS Victory wasn’t much good in the Crufts agility arena either, and no-one minds about that. You don’t really steer the Brooklands. You guide it. You suggest where it plots a heading next.