Bentley Flying Spur vs Mercedes-AMG GLE63

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.

The SUV craze is such that high-riding wagons are increasingly being tasked with also doing the job of sports cars, despite the immutable laws of physics clearly working against them.

While the results have been mixed, Mercedes-AMG has some serious form in this area, so much so that it’s been confident enough to unleash the second-generation GLE63 S.

Yep, this large SUV is looking to do its best impersonation of a sports car, so we’re looking to find out if it’s a convincing Jekyll and Hyde. Read on.