• Beautifully trimmed in the highest quality materials
• Lots of room front and rear
• Exceptional infotainment and hi-fi set-up

How is the quality and layout?

The interior of the Bentley Flying Spur is a masterclass in trim, equipment and quality. It’s hugely luxurious and although there are acres of wood veneer and quilted leather it looks modern and pleasing. You’ll find some Audi know-how in there (steering wheel controls, for instance), but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, these are bespoke cars individually trimmed and specified by their owners, so the interior ambiance is down to the driver’s preference.

The interior is very similar to the Continental GT, aside from different (and nicer-looking) central fresh air vents, which glisten beautifully at night under the interior’s mood lighting. All the controls have been given the Bentley treatment, so items such as the indicator stalks and transmission selector have been finished in chrome, and are a tactile delight.

Infotainment and tech

The digital instrumentation is also sourced from Audi, but has been redesigned to feature Bentley colours and fonts – the digital representation of a pair of analogue dials is so convincing it’s easy to question why they didn’t just fit a pair of old-school dials. As it’s an Audi system, the digital instrumentation is easy to use and configurable so you can see exactly what you want to see.

Thankfully, the Flying Spur doesn’t share the Audi A8‘s twin-screen infotainment set-up, instead using the large touch screen from the Porsche Panamera which can be flipped out of sight with the touch of a button. You can also specify the optional Bentley Rotating Display, which gives you three alternatives –  the infotainment screen or a trio of gorgeous auxilliary dials, or a continuation of the dashboard’s veneer panelling. It’s very Q-branch in operation. To make navigating the touch screen easier, Bentley has thoughtfully placed a small shelf beneath to rest your fingers on.

The Bentley Flying Spur’s infotainment system looks fantastic and is easy to use. Its centrepiece is a 12.3-inch touchscreen that is responsive to touch and quick and easy to use. It comes with sat-nav, Bluetooth, DAB radio, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and one of the most impressive features is that you can use Apple CarPlay and listen to a secondary media source at the same time.

The crowning glory of this set-up is the hi-fi setup. There are three to choose between, starting with a 10-speaker 650-watt system as standard. The next level is the 1500-watt, 16-speaker Bang & Olufsen set-up, while the flagship system, is a 2200-watt Naim Audio system that’s a bespoke set-up for Bentley. The latter system is the only hi-fi we’ve tested in the Flying Spur so far, and it’s as good a system as you’ll ever hear in a car. The power, clarity and neutrality are unrivalled – and it’s better than many a high-end domestic hi-fi setups.

Comfort

• Impressive comfort on smooth roads
• Rough roads and surface imperfections harm ride
• Supportive, well-trimmed seats front and rear

This is a comfortable car, as you’d expect. But it’s not perfect. On motorways and nicely-finished A-roads, it’s imperious and glides along with the best of them, feeling insulated and isolated without robbing the driver of feel. High-speed stability is excellent, and it’s unaffected by adverse camber and undulations in the road surface.

However, on rougher, less well-finished road surfaces, imperfections make themselves felt in the cabin, even in the Flying Spur’s most compliant drive mode setting, Comfort. Wind noise is also less well suppressed than we’d like – but it’s still overall a quiet quiet car, especially when one considers its 200mph potential.