Bentley Turbo R vs Flying Spur | PH Origin Story
What do four decades of Bentley performance limo development look like? Pretty fabulous, actually
A frequent perk of this job is the rolling out of heritage cars. Any carmaker with a respectful eye on its past has a collection of cars tucked away for special occasions or iconic anniversaries, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche boasting particularly envious collections near their German HQs. Right here in Britain, there’s an expanding collection of classic Bentleys in Crewe, a prime example of which you’re looking at here.
The Bentley Turbo R marks its 40th birthday in 2025, giving us a none-too-tenuous excuse to hop behind the wheel and compare it to its recently updated and freshly hybridised Flying Spur descendant. The older car forms an especially important marker on the Crewe timeline, given it helped Bentley sales overtake those of Rolls-Royce. A trend that’s not reversed since.
Showing due reverence to the Turbo R’s importance is a Flying Spur specced up for the occasion. It really is no accident these cars look so alike, Bentley apportioning some seriously impressive time and expense to thoroughly replicating (while carefully remixing) the spec of its museum-grade classic. The ‘Mulliner Personal Commission’ Brooklands Green of this 2025 ‘Spur Speed, complete with Monaco Yellow painted coachline, is an astonishing £19,425 option on its spec sheet. Another six grand was dropped on the open pore dark burr walnut and Cumbrian Green veneer inside. Frivolous on paper, sure, but the two look fabulous together in reality.
PH regulars will know the Turbo R has a reputation for being ‘the cheap Bentley’, however. It’s made numerous appearances in Brave Pill, often priced comfortably below a brand-new city car, and a short perusal of the classifieds suggests it still passes that same metric, this example being less than a Dacia Spring before discounts.
Bentley’s own car feels a wee bit more valuable, of course. J101PKL is visually astute and wears a modest 36,000 miles for its 34 years of age. It possesses desirable options like slimmer sports seats, a higher final drive ratio, fuel injection and anti-lock brakes. My millennial brain finds it hard to comprehend the latter weren’t standard by this stage, the bones of the Turbo R makeover being otherwise comprehensive.
Those ‘80s engineers took the existing Mulsanne Turbo – not renowned for acute cornering ability – and increased its roll stiffness by 50 per cent to better tie down its 2.2-tonne mass. Its anti-roll bars were 100 per cent stiffer at the front, 60 at the rear, while a Panhard rod further sharpened up the driven rear axle. New wheels and tyres marginally nipped away at unsprung weight and the results, given the minor icon status the car now holds and the dozens of properly performance-oriented Bentleys that followed in its wake, could be fairly called ‘era-defining’. This was Bentley proving its sporting prowess in a way it arguably hadn’t since its Blower days.
It’s inevitably outgunned by most hot hatches or, for that matter, electric SUVs. The engineering team didn’t touch the turbocharged 6.75-litre V8 in the stock Mulsanne, its peak still 302hp at 3,800rpm for a 135mph top speed and 0-62mph in seven seconds dead. Quite impressive, actually, with so much bulk to shift and a three-speed automatic ‘box through which to do it.
The Flying Spur Speed naturally bludgeons every one of those numbers bar cubic capacity. Its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 pairs with an e-motor for 782hp and 0-62 in half the time despite its additional 400 kilos of electrification (not to mention airbags, touchscreens and other 21st-century fare). It’s all-wheel drive, too, though Bentley’s Ultra Performance Hybrid powertrain is only too happy to fling all of its might to the rear if it deems your inputs worthy.
Yet the old car doesn’t feel overshadowed. It lacks the soft-close functionality of a modern luxury car – natch – and you need to give its vault-like doors a proper wallop to avoid embarrassment. While its quad-headlight restyle echoes its own period, the inside feels much more vintage and clearly demonstrates the budgets and development cycles of half-century-ago Bentley (and, indeed, Rolls). Both brands’ consistent strides forward since their respective German takeovers feel like a different universe and perched high, peering over its rudimentary steering wheel and down its long bonnet to the Flying B, the Turbo R unequivocally feels classic.
Slotting the column gear selector into Drive and pootling out of your driveway is reassuringly easy; not a parking sensor in sight, of course, instead acres of glass which allow you to take responsibility yourself. With its six-and-3/4 pre-warmed already, I obviously can’t resist hoofing forwards right from the off. After a quick one-two as everything spools up, the Turbo R then propels forwards very briskly indeed, the V8 raising its voice but maintaining its manners. Gearshifts slur home quicker than I’d dare imagine, and there’s mercifully little need to test its optional ABS thanks to the admirable cornering speeds it can maintain.
Oh, it pitches and rolls – of course it does – but to a far smaller degree than its base Mulsanne and no more than you’d expect of a 40-year-old barge forced to put on its PE kit. The narrow lanes around Crewe appear to be cramping its style, in fact, and I’m quickly craving wider, more expansive roads to properly flow down. There’s a Sport button for the transmission – triggering a shrill beep to ensure no chauffeur could sneak its activation past their VIP consignment – but I can’t say it elicits a vast character change. There’s a thoroughly charming swagger to an invigorated Turbo R either way.
Switching to the Spur initially reveals the extent to which Bentley committed to matching this pair’s specs. Proof that Crewe is in rude health, perhaps. It’s a glorious thing to behold, and one that immediately coddles you lower and snugger inside its marginally longer body.
Hybrid-era Bentleys bring a dizzying array of drive modes and options. Stick to the default ‘Bentley’ and you’ll skulk quietly away on e-power alone, only the trampling of 2.6 tonnes on gravel to give your game away. In the interests of science, though, let’s twist its knurled dial to Sport for the full, near-800hp blitz forward. Pleasingly there’s still a mite of a delay to its forward propulsion, surely engineered in for old time’s sake. You’re sure you want all that performance, sir? Okay, here’s 100mph in 7.4 seconds…
Its handling operates many echelons above the Turbo R’s, with four decades of chassis tech and stability control development to ensure it’s as easy to hustle along as a Passat TDI. Just much, much more fun, not least when an Akrapovic exhaust has snuck onto the spec sheet too. Clearly they allowed themselves to veer a little off script.
Where it differs from its Brooklands Green buddy is that it's evidently a car with vast performance baked into its core development, not manipulated from it at a later date. While it never entirely shrugs off its weight or dimensions, it stops, steers and goes with an intrinsic precision and you can bring any driving style you like with latent capability (and its numerous drive modes) to platform it all.
Perhaps crucially, a PHEV powertrain boosts its Bentley-ness rather than awkwardly detracting from it. Owners do apparently plug them in at home Monday to Friday, utilising its claims of 47 miles sans local emissions, but if you’ve laid out over £300,000 on one – like the car pictured here – there’s clearly no financial incentive to do so.
It's easy to think of the 2003 Continental GT as the beginning of modern, sporting Bentley; of cars that are objectively athletic as well as subjectively sumptuous. The Turbo R arguably notches that mark on the timeline back to 1985, to a car with some cleverly apportioned time and budget to tease unlikely prowess from an existing – ageing – platform. It certainly performed well in period, swiftly amassing a nine-month waiting list as 7,000 of them rolled out of Crewe in the following 12 years. Testament to it all is the continued wealth of them on the used market, a handful of which remain tantalisingly cheap. I suspect not for long.
Specification | 2025 Bentley Flying Spur Speed
Engine: 3,996cc twin-turbocharged V8, electric motor, 25.9kWh battery
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch, all-wheel drive
Power: 782hp
Torque: 738lb ft
0-62mph: 3.5sec
Top speed: 177mph
Weight: 2,646kg
MPG: 202
CO2: 33g/km
Price: from £239,000
Specification | 1991 Bentley Turbo R
Engine: 6,750cc turbocharged V8
Transmission: 3-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power: 302hp
Torque: 450lb ft
0-62mph: 7.0sec
Top speed: 135mph
Weight: 2,234kg
MPG: 16 (est)
CO2: N/A
Price: c£100,000 (new), £7,000-£30,000 (now)
One of my father s clients had one.
As a kid I remember sitting in the back of one on the Bentley stand at the Motorshow. British Racing Green with a red coach stripe and quarter badges with dark green leather seats piped red with red lambswool rugs. An amazing place to be and seemed so cosseting. The salesman kicked me out after about half an hour.
In later years my father had a Mulliner Continental R (essentially a long wheelbase T) followed by a Mulliner Arnage T.
Both amazing cars but I wish he d kept the Continental which was a really special thing. More like sailing a yacht than driving a car.
Key thing is don't buy a complete rotter, otherwise you'll spend thousands and keep chasing problems. If you buy a car in decent nick, mechanically they aren't too bad at all (I had a faulty hydraulic circuit valve which I replaced for £100 or so). Decent spare parts availability from specialists, including rebuild kits so you don't generally need to replace really expensive components.
Mine was a 8/10 car when I bought it, and probably a 7/10 when I sold it after a few years.
The thing that starts to cost money is all the trim bits as they deteriorate from corrosion, and from sun (mine started getting some lacquer issues on some of the veneer marquetry, some pitting on some trim on the outside, bits of fade etc.). All really minor but if I were to try and stay on top of it all to make it mint I'd have spent a fortune... so if you can have yours garaged, and maintained by yourself or a handy specialist, it shouldn't cost that much at all.
It really was a fantastic car, wonderful blend of aeronautical and automotive engineering and analogue craftsmanship, and always felt special.
Had a few SZ Bentleys over the years, including Brian Johnson's old Bentley Eight. They are a grand old palace to waft around in. Rot kills them and hydraulic system failure will render them useless.
But, they aren't as bad on fuel as you might think and are relatively easy to maintain, if you have a good base to start with.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/in...
So actually the current car is the same price-ish
One of my father s clients had one.
As a kid I remember sitting in the back of one on the Bentley stand at the Motorshow. British Racing Green with a red coach stripe and quarter badges with dark green leather seats piped red with red lambswool rugs. An amazing place to be and seemed so cosseting. The salesman kicked me out after about half an hour.
In later years my father had a Mulliner Continental R (essentially a long wheelbase T) followed by a Mulliner Arnage T.
Both amazing cars but I wish he d kept the Continental which was a really special thing. More like sailing a yacht than driving a car.
One of my father s clients had one.
As a kid I remember sitting in the back of one on the Bentley stand at the Motorshow. British Racing Green with a red coach stripe and quarter badges with dark green leather seats piped red with red lambswool rugs. An amazing place to be and seemed so cosseting. The salesman kicked me out after about half an hour.
In later years my father had a Mulliner Continental R (essentially a long wheelbase T) followed by a Mulliner Arnage T.
Both amazing cars but I wish he d kept the Continental which was a really special thing. More like sailing a yacht than driving a car.
As said above while the older Bentleys are cheap to buy they can be ruinous to run.
The Arnage had a bill in the history file for £26k.
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