Bentley Continental Supersports For 2010

You have cash to burn, successful career on autopilot and the mansion is finally mortgage-free, you’re in the market for a new car, one that speaks to your success and station in the community. But, you’re also in full mid-life crisis, sentimental for the tearaway youthfulness you now regret suppressing every time you open that second bottle of Chateau Lafite. Indeed, in your last act of impetuousness before children and creeping maturity reared their ugly heads, you owned an Aston Martin. Not one of these new namby-pamby ones, what with their button-down engineering and sophisticated electronics, but a real he-man-of-yesteryear Vantage with eight thundering pistons, a rock-crunching transmission and coil springs stiff enough to suspend the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, you head down to your friendly neighborhood British luxury car dealership only to find that the Aston’s oh-so-low seats that once gripped as you sported about now have you screaming about your arthritic back. As lovely as all sumptuous leather and V12 cacophony is, rampant lust is of no use if you can’t climb into the bed. What to do? You certainly don’t want to head to your friendly Audi, BMW or Mercedes dealers. Ruthlessly engineered their cars may be, but Teutonic efficiency is not nearly as welcoming as British warmth. Besides, everyone has an AMG or M5 parked in their garage and separating yourself from the herd is why you file all those litigious torts.

What about Bentley? Yes, there’s an entire spate of German engineering to its underpinnings, but it’s at least outfitted like a proper English motorcar. And, unlike the Aston, it’s not nearly as hard on geriatric spinal columns. But that’s to be expected, no? Bentleys, after all, are not nearly as sporty as Aston Martins.

That would have been true right up until, well, last week, when I popped into Grand Touring Automobiles, my local Aston/Bentley dealer, and spotted a brand new Continental Supersports conveniently tagged with dealer plates and no scheduled customer test drives for the next three days. For those unfamiliar with this latest Continental, the Supersports is, quite literally, the philosophical progeny of W.O. Bentley’s famed monsters that dominated Le Mans during the 1920s.