Bentley Continental Supersports review

The Supersports is based on what is now a 20-year old design, and frankly, it shows. We can forgive the primitive sat-nav graphics and the fact Apple CarPlay isn’t present (the base car predates the invention of the iPhone by several years after all). But there are plenty of basic ergonomic, ahem, quirks and foibles inside here that you need to be aware of.

Firstly, you sit too high. The lofty driving position suits the debonair standard car, but in the Supersports you’ll long to sit just a tad closer to the ground rushing beneath your backside. There’s a bizarre lack of headroom if you’re over six feet tall, and the reclined slender sports seats feel ill at ease in here, perched too high with the steering wheel quite a stretch away.

There’s also problems with obscured switchgear and the odd paddleshifters and stalks making life behind the steering wheel rather busy. And you might find the carbon fibre dashboard a tad ‘mainstream’ somehow. Lots of carmakers fit slabs of carbon to the console. But few do wood veneer as richly as Bentley.

OKAY, SO WHAT'S GOOD INSIDE THE SUPERSPORTS?

The deep-set clocks are so very Bentley, and far more evocative than today’s Audi-ish digiscreen. There’s a dense sensation of quality from the organ-stop vent controls, the door handles, and even the glovebox release. And even though the youngest Supersports are over a decade old now, they’ll probably still smell expensive inside. Bentley’s leather hides are right up there with Rolls-Royce, and far more luxuriant than what you’d find in a contemporary Porsche or Mercedes.

IS IT PRACTICAL?

As you know there’s no back seats: just a thickset carbon fibre bar which was probably intended to add extra body rigidity, but is more likely to act as a designer shopping bag backstop. But the boot’s 370-litre cavern is miles more capacious than what Aston Martin was offering at the time (back in the days before both brands made roomy SUVs, of course).