BMW 6 Series vs Bentley Flying Spur

What's the difference?

This isn't a car for everyone's tastes, but if you fit in to the buyer group that just doesn't really know what they want in a luxury car, it could be the perfect fit for your family. The 6 Series GT is a practical large prestige car, albeit one that will likely find very few buyers.

The Bentley Flying Spur Speed is a whole lot of car, for a whole lot of money. Sure, I’d rather have a Ferrari or a Porsche with similar power (and the Panamera shares the same V8 and hybrid set up), but then if you’re in the market for a Bentley like this you already have a garage full of other options. And I can see why you’d add one of these to your collection. Because you can.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

There is no denying the 6 Series GT looks better than the old 5 Series GT. It isn't as frumpy, it looks more sporty, and to me it appears to have grown into its identity with more conviction than its predecessor.

That said, I don't necessarily like the look very much - it's a bit like a BMW X6 that has been rounded off a little and lowered down substantially. But I can appreciate some of the finer design aesthetics that it offers up: the frameless windows are a nice touch, and the swooping roofline looks smoother than a duck's back.

Other things like the active grille shutters and the air breathers ahead of the front doors are nice functional touches, and to my eye it lives up to BMW's hope of it looking "smooth but muscular". You can get the 630i with either the M Sport package, like you see here, or the more sedate Luxury Line, which is, well, more luxurious looking.

The M Sport styling and equipment package you see in the images here - with M aero kit and 19-inch wheels (ours had been upgraded to optional 20s) - help out with the athletic look of this very big vehicle.

It's huge in fact. The length of the 630i is 5091mm long, it measures 1902mm wide and sits at 1538mm tall, with a lengthy 3070mm wheelbase.

All that equates to a lot of room in the cabin, and what a sumptuous and delightful place it is to be - leather, wood and plush finishes abound.

Bentley seems to have spent the design budget on the Continental GT Speed, which was launched at the same time and gets the same new engine under its slightly sexier bonnet. The big move there has been going from Bentley’s traditional four headlight face to a smoother more modern one with just two lights, or eyes.

The Flying Spur, by comparison, sticks with the more traditional look, and four eyes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it looks nerdier. Indeed, it’s still an impressive and handsome beast and does a mighty fine job of making this much metal and mass look bold and desirable. 

Truly, vehicles this large tend to look lumpen and making one look as good this Flying Spur Speed does is an impressive feat. Look at the photos and be impressed.

The interior fit out and fittings are stunning, with Bentley boldly claiming it makes the best car cabins in the world. It’s not an outrageous claim, either.

Now, I said before that this is a bit like an X6, but it has heaps better interior space than that SUV.

As soon as you slide into the driver's seat, you feel like your inside a large car. The cabin space is plentiful, and there's an abundance of storage on offer, too: there's a split-lid armrest between the seats, a pair of cupholders, a phone storage nook with wireless charging, and big door pockets with bottle holsters.

In the back you have access to door pockets, a flip-down armrest with cupholders (that middle part of the seat can fold down completely to allow storage of longer items), and there's excellent room on offer. How many seats in the BMW 6 Series GT? Five - like, five full-size seats.

Because the roofline doesn't rake as sharply as a four-door 'coupe', headroom is excellent for adults (even of the 183cm variety, like myself), and legroom and toe room are equally very good. This is bigger in the back than a 5 Series, but maybe not as plush as a 7 Series… so I guess it makes sense numerically for its nomenclature.

Of course you get climate control in the front (and in the rear if you option it), and the materials are excellent. The media screen is tablet-style, proudly displaying 10.25 inches of high-def real estate that is both touch-capacitive and controllable by way of the central rotary controller with touchpad. And get this - you can even use gestures to control certain elements like volume, swiping and changing tracks… but you have to option that.

The fully digital instrument display is bordered by a set of incomplete dial rings, which is just odd. BMW, back yourself - your buyers can handle just having a digital screen in front of them, particularly when it's as good as this one.

This grandiose hatchback's boot is commodious - with the back seats in place it has a huge 610 litres of cargo capacity, which extends to 1800L with the 40/20/40 seats folded down using the quick release levers in the boot area.

There is no spare wheel (the BMW range is fitted with run-flat tyres) but it does have a secondary hidden storage area under the boot floor for hiding items or stowing wet gear, bathers/swimmers or muddy clothes.

For context, the X6 has 580L seats up, 1525L seats down.

I’m not going to pretend that I had my laptop out taking notes while we were hitting 200km/h down the back straight at Magarigawa, but at more sane speeds there’s no doubt the rear seats of this car would be a very relaxing, plush, cosseting and pleasant smelling place to sit and work.

That’s at least partly what the Flying Spur Speed is for, a limousine for those who don’t like, or perhaps can’t quite afford, a Rolls-Royce, but still want great British solidity, class and that sense of obscene wealth, probably inherited.

The bonus of the Flying Spur is that it’s also a lovely place to be should you choose either of the front seats, with hugely comfortable seats that are more like couches, endless adjustability and many soothing massage settings for your heated and ventilated pews.

The spinning central 12.3-inch display remains the highlight, offering you a modern touch screen, which can disappear to reveal either three classic analogue dials or a plan piece of dashboard, if you prefer a “digital detox”.

Is “value” even a word that people use when they can afford to shop for a Bentley that costs $581,900, and will not be their only car? At very least, it’s a term that means something different to the people who breathe that kind of rarefied air.

The kind who have memberships to the exclusive Magarigawa Club where the Flying Spur Speed was launched. When just being a member costs a rumoured $1 million a year (and there’s a waiting list to get in), then half that much for a car probably isn’t so much.

The Flying Spur Speed comes with everything you would expect from a Bentley, incredible levels of comfort, a modern hybrid system that allows you to pretend you’re an eco-warrior while driving through the zero-emission zones of big cities like London and plenty of space and shiny things to look at.

The stereo is a Naim for Bentley audio system "arguably the finest in-car hi-fi available in any production car", while you also score a panoramic sunroof and mood lighting and even lovely deep-pile mats in the footwells. Ahh.

Sure, you could buy Ferraris and Lamborghinis for that kind of money, but they don’t have comfortable back seats like this Bentley, for those days when you really need to get to the chopper (parked on your personal helipad) in a hurry.

Under the bonnet of the 630i is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, which produces 190kW of power (at 6500rpm) and 400Nm of torque (from 1550-4400rpm). It uses an eight-speed automatic transmission, and is rear-wheel drive.

That may not seem a lot considering the size of this machine, but consider that some of the steamiest four-cylinder hot hatches have nearly the same outputs, and you realise this engine offers up a far-from slouched approach to propulsion.

The 640i xDrive has a 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbocharged engine with 250kW of power and 450Nm of torque. It gets the same eight-speed auto, but as the xDrive naming indicates, it's all-wheel drive.

But this is the one you'd prefer if you want to hit highway speed in a hurry - the 0-100km/h claim is 5.3 seconds, where the 630i takes a full second longer (6.3sec) according to the company.

If you’re going to put the word “Speed” in the title of your car, you really can’t mess about when it comes to the powerplant, and Bentley also has a proud history of making hugely powerful V12 engines to live up to. That’s a history that has now ended, with the announcement that the new 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 in this Flying Spur Speed will be the one and only in all Bentleys, henceforth, including the Continental and the Bentayga SUV.

Bentley’s W12 engine is, sadly, no more, which might well make some older Flying Spurs quite collectable.

The V8 will come in different flavours, of course, and it’s also a hybrid, as is the modern way. Bentley calls the 140kW electric motor attached to the engine an “e-machine”.

Using that machine, the Speed can whisk you around in silent, EV-only mode for up to 81km. With such a stupendous sounding V8 on offer, it’s hard to see why you’d bother, but it’s an option, and the hybrid system is cleverly set up so that the harder you drive, the quicker the battery recharges, so effectively you’d almost never have to actually plug this PHEV in.

With the engine and e-machine combined, you’re looking at a staggering 575kW and 1000Nm, enough to propel all 2646kg of this Flying Spur Speed to 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds.

It might not sound quite as orchestrally moving as the big, sassy W12, but it’s still a hell of a replacement, as it is, in fact, “the most powerful Bentley engine ever”. That will do nicely.

BMW claims fuel use of 7.0 litres per 100 kilometres, and you'll need to use 95RON premium unleaded when you fill up.

On my trip with the car, I saw about 9.0L/100km across mostly high-speed driving - some freeway, some highway, some country back road touring, and quite a bit of corners and city stuff thrown in as well. I think that's pretty respectable.

What wasn't so great was the lack of premium fuel in some of the 'away from civilisation' places on my route home. Keep that in mind if planning your own GT long-distance cruise.

So, if you were very careful to use your 81km of EV-only range, as often as possible, and you drove very slowly and treated the accelerator pedal with great care, you might, possibly, achieve the Flying Spur Speed’s claimed fuel-economy of 10.7 litres per 100km. 

That’s the great thing about hybrids like this, they are theoretical fuel misers of the highest order. But if you aren’t careful and you care more about enjoying that twin-turbo V8 engine you’ve paid so much money for, you’re never, ever going to get it under 15L/100km, and you’ll quite likely exceed 20L/100km, as we did, with ease, by driving it around a track all day.

Theoretically, again, this Bentley will emit just 33 grams of CO2 per kilometre. 

I'll put this out there - if you like to drive, there are BMW models for less than this one that will put a much bigger smile on your face. Like, a 440i Gran Coupe, or even just a 330i sedan…

But if you're in BMW's target market - that being older executive buyers who want space and luxury as a priority over thrills at the wheel, you could do a lot worse.

That's because the 6 Series GT lopes along the highway without fuss - the engine easily coping with the demands of overtaking moves, the adjustable drive modes allowing a light steering and wafting suspension feel to wile away the kilometres.

There are 'Comfort' and 'Comfort Plus' modes, but the latter is a bit too spongy and can be boaty feeling. The Comfort setting is made for the highway.

It is actually pretty agile for its dimensions.

If you decide to deviate from the straight sections, you'll be able to explore a little bit of dynamic range, especially when you dial up the 'Sport' mode, which changes the damper settings, steering weight, throttle and transmission response, and even the digital dials in front of the driver to a more aggressive look.

Our car had the 'Integral Active Steering' setting, which is a variable ratio steering system that includes rear steering - that essentially helps make is more turnable in corners at highway speed, and easier to park at lower speeds. It's difficult to say whether the assistance is excellent or not short of driving a car without the tech, but to this tester it was hard to hide the size and weight (1835kg kerb weight) of the vehicle.

That isn't to say it's clumsy or lumbering - it is actually pretty agile for its dimensions, though it makes a lot more sense on long drives and coastal cruises than it does in the narrow and twisty alpine roads of the Snowy Mountains Highway that I tested it on.

There's good grip from the tyres, and strong response from the powertrain - but if it were my money, and I had to have a 6 Series for whatever reason, I'd be looking towards the 640i model, which has a thumping six-cylinder with 250kW/450Nm - certainly an engine that would be more at home in this car. Plus that model comes with AWD.

Any car with a whopping 575kW and 1000Nm is going to be interesting, even invigorating to drive, but you’d have to say the smaller and lighter it is, the more excitement, and even fear, you’re going to be faced with.

In the case of the Bentley Flying Spur Speed, you’re talking about an enormous, and enormously luxurious and comfortable, sedan that’s designed to carry more than two people, and weighs a hefty 2646kg.

It’s a limousine powered by a rocket, as I said earlier, but looking at the size, and pondering the weight of it, you really don’t expect too much in the way of thrills. Effortless performance, sure, titanic overtaking thrust, perhaps, but then you read the fine print and note that this Flying Spur Speed can hit 100km/h in 3.5 seconds.

That’s seriously fast in anything, but in a car this big, and filled with as much luxury as a mid-sized super yacht, it feels other worldly. 

Hammering the big Speed around a tight, intense race track feels strange at first and then strangely comfortable. Even sitting in the back wasn’t so much frightening as amusing, as the big Bentley simply slopes through any challenge you throw at it.

Sure, I’d like it to be louder, and you do miss the sound of the old 12-cylinder engine (and Bentley fans in particularly might find its absence upsetting), but the V8 is still throaty enough to please your ears, and it’s important to consider that it’s actually more powerful than the old W12, which is no mean feat.

Compared to the shorter, sharper Continental GT Speed we drove on the same day, the Flying Spur does have a bit more body roll, a bit more pitch and dive under braking from 200km/h, or when accelerating ballistically out of slow corners, but it’s still stupendously impressive for what it is.

And that is a luxury limousine that can turn itself into a race track weapon if you, and your three passengers, want it to. 

The Flying Spur Speed comes with 10 airbags and it has not been crash tested. Bentley also has its own 'Safeguard' suite of technologies including auto emergency braking, 'Swerve Assist' and 'Turn Assist'. 

Other tech includes 'Predictive Adaptive Cruise Assist with Lane Guidance', lane departure warning, emergency assist, remote park assist and 3D surround-view monitor.

BMW runs a condition-based servicing plan, which means the car will tell you when it needs servicing. But you can rest assured it won't (theoretically) cost you much, with the brand's 'Service Inclusive' pack. It covers you for basic maintenance as and when required for five years/80,000km. According to BMW, that includes "annual vehicle checks, oil changes, all filters, spark plugs and labour costs for the duration of the package".

BMW offers a three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty plan, and you get the same cover for roadside assistance.

The Bentley Continental GT Speed comes with a five-year, all-inclusive servicing plan as standard.

That sounds good, but stunningly, Bentley still only offers a three-year manufacturer warranty, albeit one with no mileage limitations. That's way below industry standard these days.

The battery that forms part of the hybrid system is, however, warrantied for eight years, or 160,000km.