Bentley Flying Spur vs Hyundai Imax

What's the difference?

In any other super car, it would seem deeply strange, wrong even, to loll (and LOL) in the back seats while a colleague blasts you around a race track at insane speeds, and not just because cars with V12 engines making 575kW and 1000Nm don’t normally have more than two seats.

The Bentley Flying Spur Speed is, of course, no ordinary car, it is a super sedan, a luxe limousine crossed with a rocket ship, and if Sir wants to get to the rooftop helipad in a spectacular hurry, then these are the back seats to be sitting in.

We flew to Japan, and the spectacular setting of the Magarigawa Club, a members-only race track carved out of the rolling hills outside Tokyo at a rumoured cost of $US2 billion, to try the back seats, and the driver’s seat, of the new and very impressive Flying Spur Speed.

Hyundai’s contender in the under-$60,000 people mover segment boasts a heritage spanning a full decade. During that time it has built a loyal customer base that appreciates its spacious and airy eight-seater cabin, ease of driving, proven durability and five-year warranty.

Even so, the iMax and other well-established people movers are getting clobbered by Hyundai’s sister company Kia and its widely acclaimed Carnival, which with four model grades across a broad pricing spectrum currently boasts a dominant market share of more than 50 per cent.

There are numerous reasons for the Carnival’s popularity but that should not stop a potential buyer from also giving the iMax serious consideration. Its most recent upgrade to Series II specification in 2016 brought styling revisions and new features which made a good people mover even better.