Bentley Continental vs Ferrari 296

What's the difference?

Close your eyes for me and try to picture a two-door vehicle with a thumping V8 engine, 575kW and a whopping 1000Nm on tap, a 0-100km/h burst of 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 335km/h. Does it look like a Ferrari in your head? Something else Italian, or German perhaps?

Well, what if I tell you it also weighs 2.5 tonnes. Are you imagining a luxe SUV with the rear doors removed, perhaps? Think again, because what we’re discussing here is arguably the very best of Britain (albeit German-owned), the all new and highly impressive Bentley Continental GT Speed.

Gone is the famous and fabulous W12 engine, never to return (Bentley was long the world’s biggest maker of 12-cylinder engines, henceforth it will make exactly none), to be replaced by the one and only power plant the company will now offer, in various tunes, in all of its ICE cars (yes, a Bentley EV is coming, of course).

All that torque isn’t just from the big 4.0-litre V8, it’s also an 'Ultra Performance Hybrid', which will allow you to drive up to 81km in fully silent electric mode, should you be so boring.

We flew to a posh and very private members-only race track in Japan to find it out if this really is, as Bentley suggests, the everyday supercar.

I know, picture Ferrari and you'll likely be conjuring images of potent V12 or V8 engines, a scenery-shaking exhaust bark on start-up and a fuel bill that would make a Sheikh wince.

But this one, the 296 GTS, doesn't have, or do, any of those things. In fact, it doesn’t so much explode into life as it does kind of whirr gently, as though you’ve just switched on a photocopier.

And yet, people I trust on these matters reckon this just might be the best Ferrari to have ever worn the badge. So, I guess we better get to figuring out what the hell is going on with this plug-in Prancing Horse.