The Bentley Flying Spur, known as the Bentley Continental Flying Spur before 2013, is a full-sized luxury car produced by Bentley Motors Limited since 2005. It is the four-door saloon variant of the Bentley Continental GT two-door coupé.
The Flying Spur is assembled by hand at Bentley's factory in Crewe, England. Briefly, due to lack of capacity at the Crewe factory upon the car's introduction, 1,358 units of the first generation Flying Spur destined for markets other than the United States and United Kingdom were built at parent-company Volkswagen's Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany. This arrangement ended in early 2007, when all assembly works reverted to Crewe.
__TOC__
First generation (2005–2013)
Overview
The first-generation Flying Spur was officially unveiled at the 75th Geneva Motor Show in March 2005. It had a twin-turbocharged W12 engine tuned to produce and torque of at 1,600–6,100 rpm. Torsen-based permanent all-wheel drive system was standard on the Flying Spur. It can go in 4.9 seconds, and can reach a top speed of . It also has Adaptive Air Suspension and Continuous Damping Control as standard. At that time, it was the world's fastest and most powerful production saloon.
Sales of the first-generation Flying Spur began in late 2005. During the first full-year sales of the Flying Spur, the number of deliveries exceeded 4,000 units. The Speed model of the Flying Spur was introduced in 2008 as a higher performance variant with revised ceramic disc brakes and tuned to produce 602 horsepower. The acceleration of the Speed model is in 4.5 seconds, and can reach a top speed of . A total of 1,155 units of the Speed model were produced in model years 2009 and 2010.
Engines
{| class="wikitable sortable collapsible"
|+Petrol engines
!Model!!Years!!Type/code!!Power at rpm, Torque at rpm
|-
|Flying Spur||2005–2013|| W12 twin turbo|| at 6,100, at 1,600–6,100
|-
|Flying Spur Speed||2008–2013|| W12 twin turbo|| at 6,000, at 1,700–5,600
|}
Transmissions
{| class="wikitable sortable collapsible"
|+Petrol engines
!Model!!Years!!Types
|-
|Flying Spur||2005–2013||ZF 6-speed automatic with wheel-mounted paddle shifters
|-
|Flying Spur Speed||2008–2013||ZF 6-speed automatic with wheel-mounted paddle shifters
|}
The steering column-mounted paddle shifters enable direct access to the six-speed gearbox when the ZF transmission is in "S" or sports mode.