“You can thread the Bentley with as much confidence as the DB9. Its steering is so well judged.” (Charlie Magee/Autocar photo) » More Photos

How plain and dignified the DB9’s cabin looks in light of the modifications made for the new DBS. The driver environment couldn’t feel more different from the others, both of which are two-door versions of large sedan bodyshells. This is a low, compact sports car silhouette and, even though it offers nothing like the space, that intimacy can be a real bonus.

As ever, the DB9’s transmission is excellent, blurring shifts and allowing the driver to interject with the odd downshift that is electronically chamfered. The question the DB9 asks you is how much you want to be involved in the process of driving. If the answer is “quite a lot,” the Aston is in with a shout here. The driver needs to do more to direct the machine – small steering alterations, throttle modulations – and is far more exposed to the frictions generated between the car and the road surface and the air surrounding it. It’s more fatiguing, but then at 3770lbs it feels like an Elise after the Merc.

But not the Bentley. It’s only when you’ve stepped from the Aston, in the knowledge that it’s 1411lbs lighter than the Speed, that Bentley’s achievement with this car crystalizes into something tangible.

You can thread the Bentley with as much confidence as the DB9 because its revised steering is so well judged for speed and weight. That and the fact that it’s connected to a chassis that deals with extreme mass better than anything I’ve driven before. Straight-line stability is as good as you’ll experience in anything, and all-wheel drive clearly helps enormously. It’s one thing simply dealing with weight, and quite another to inject an almost playful nature into the mix. If this were an ordinary GT, the Aston’s joker card would have been its keenness to enjoy those moments which punctuate the time between freeway schleps, but the Bentley’s recent steroid injection rather pours water on that bonfire.

The Aston’s other problem is in its lack of gadgets. Such things shouldn’t matter, but when the Mercedes offers not only satellite navigation so advanced that the map looks like a printout from Google Earth, but also optional night vision, it puts into context the DB9’s lack of automatic wipers, automatic lights and its quite appalling Volvo-derived navigation. It could also do with a new wiper system. Anything more than a brief burst on the fastest setting causes the leading blade to slap the A-pillar, thereby creating a noise more irritating than a crone’s cackle.

Again, it’s the Bentley’s cabin that provides a good compromise between the austere CL and the attractive but gizmo-deficient DB9. The symmetrical dashboard shape is dignified – even if the Volkswagen-derived navigation screen and buttons aren’t – and there are enough yards of cured cow to have a very expensive smell seeping into the cabin. It’s a place in which you could spend many, many hours.

The CL65 is unlike anything else on sale. Outside California and a few UAE states, it sells by the handful and that situation is unlikely to change. On a long-distance trip, though, it would deliver you to your destination less fatigued than either of its rivals here. Its cabin is bigger and its straight-line performance (on a dry surface) needs to be experienced to be believed, yet the package is tainted because, whichever way you approach the big CL, it seems just a little tasteless. But I remain in awe of how it can subjugate a long, intimidating journey.

“You can thread the Bentley with as much confidence as the DB9. Its steering is so well judged.” (Charlie Magee/Autocar photo) » More Photos

People will always buy the DB9 on looks alone, and then be surprised by how well it covers long distances. Its key assets are that gearbox and a brand of interaction that comes with its sporting credentials. It sounds wonderful, rides well enough (if nothing like as well as the others) and makes you feel special behind the wheel. Mercedes would kill for a slice of that last quality.

But there can be no doubt that the GT Speed is the best car here. To say that it is the car the Continental should have been all along is simplistic, but true. There is no other car that will chomp freeway miles so easily and then prove so adept and enjoyable over a multitude of different roads. It is so good that the red paint makes no difference. The consummate GT is most definitely a Bentley.
Chris Harris/Autocar


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