‘Ok, so you’ve got a Bentley GT Continental…..’
Shania Twain, in her 1997 hit ‘That don’t impress me much’ seemed to suggest that a Brad Pit lookalike rocket scientist with a supersonic car wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting underneath that skin tight, leopard-print Sith Lord outfit, unless they also possessed a certain something that would ‘keep [her] warm in the middle of the night’.
If you’re reading this Shania, I’m an average looking, under qualified, Local Authority officer with a battered Ford Fiesta, but I’ve got a hot water bottle… just saying. However, if the Bentley GT Continental doesn’t impress Shania Twain, then she’s a moron. It’s amazing!
I got the call for the job while having lunch at my Grandma’s house (her of Austen Allegro fame), with the wife and kids. I was going to turn it down, on account of the pick up being miles away, until my boss told me what I’d be driving:
“Are you sure I can’t tempt you Jake? I’ve got a couple of jobs for you and the first one is a brand new Bentley.”
I ditched my family quicker than someone who found out he wasn’t the father on the Jeremy Kyle show.
My Grandma said something about her driving the wife and kids home later, but I couldn’t really hear her from where my car was parked down the drive…… and I wasn’t really listening anyway. I raced back to Brighton , where I haphazardly parked my car in the street adjacent to my house (actually, it looked more abandoned than parked). Once home, I yanked my trusty miniature motorised steed from the communal hallway where I keep it, and tore away to meet my destiny.
I spotted the beast as soon as I arrived at the pick up point. It stood out a mile from the rest of the mediocre specimens littering the car park. A jet-black monsterpiece!
Those Porsche 911 nerves came back in spades, but I marshalled my trepidation as best I could. The door opened with a piston-like hiss, and closed with a ‘clunk’ that sounded – I can put it no other way – smug.
Brand new, the Bentley costs as much as half a house does, so I won’t be nipping to the cash point, then skipping to my local Bentley dealership any time soon.
The first thing I noticed about the inside of the car, apart from it being bloody gorgeous, was that it had a timepiece – not a clock, not a watch – a Bentley signature timepiece embedded in the dashboard. That alone was probably worth more than both of my kidneys. As I stepped in and sat down, I was informed that the leather that coated pretty much all of the interior was hand-stitched. I hoped, beyond hope, that this work was undertaken ethically, however I had a sinking suspicion that it was probably done by underprivileged Taiwanese children. I made a mental note to do something charitable and worthwhile later to redress the karmic balance.
I was actually surprised, and mildly disappointed, that the car wasn’t equipped with some sort of retina scanner or voice recognition system for starting it. All it had was a boring red button on the dashboard. I reached out and fired up the engine. The noise the thing made was unearthly. It was like all the cats in the world started purring at once, through a festival sound system. I revved the engine to the nodding approval of the obviously proud owner. The cats were replaced with dragons.
“We could turn right out of the park. That’s the quickest way home but it’s all built up and residential that way. Or you could go left and join the by-pass…. if you want to put your foot down?”
Being the consummate professional driver that I am, I obviously turned right.
But let’s say – hypothetically – that I turned left instead…..
I would have probably discovered that the Bentley GT Continental gets up to a hundred miles an hour faster than I can say ‘fuck me, I’m doing a hundred miles an hour’. This is down to the car possessing something called a ‘6 litre, V12’ engine. This should mean more to me than it does – it probably means more to you than it does me. All I know is that it’s not the most economical of creatures, averaging at around 12-15 miles per gallon. If Mother Nature were to own a car, I would be very surprised if it were a Bentley GT Continental. It’d probably be a Honda Jazz.
After dropping off the customer, I unpacked my bike and scooted off to my next job, picking up yet another feckin’ top spec Range Rover. YAWN!!!
In conclusion then: Driving a Bentley GT Continental was an experience I’ll not forget in a hurry, plus I got to do it for free.
Lucky you, I can only admire a Bentley from afar. I know it does have great features besides the fact it has an amazing interior and exterior look. Plus I heard it's also bulletproof, is that right?
ReplyDelete-Bethany Morrison