When you have parts lying around, it makes sense to use them, no" We don’t know if Bentley has a cache of spare parts burning a hole in its storage facilities, but we do know it has the ability to juice the twin-turbo V-8 in the Continental V8 to produce more power, plus a bevy of special parts to turn an everyday Continental GT V8 into the sharper-driving, sportier Continental GT V8 S. Available in coupe and convertible guises, the V8 S is Bentley’s in-betweener, more powerful than the base eight-cylinder Continentals but not as outright fast as the twelve-cylinder Contis. Given the similarities between the Continental and the four-door Flying Spur, it was only a matter of time before Bentley decided to give the Flying Spur V8 the “S” treatment?and it finally has.
Using the same twin-turbo V-8 as the Continental V8 S, the Flying Spur V8 S matches that coupe’s 521 horsepower and 502 lb-ft of torque. (The regular Flying Spur V8 makes do with “just” 500 horsepower and 487 lb-ft.) An eight-speed automatic transmission shuffles the engine’s might to all four wheels via an all-wheel-drive system biased 40 percent to the front axle and 60 percent to the rear. The extra power lowers the Flying Spur V8’s zero-to-60 time from a claimed 4.9 seconds to only 4.6 seconds, while top speed rises from 183 mph to 190. Those figures still trail what Bentley quotes for the W-12?powered Flying Spur (4.3 seconds to 60 mph and an ...