Chevrolet Corvette vs Bentley Continental

What's the difference?

Chevrolet’s Corvette Z06 supercar is an all-American answer to European rivals Lamborghini and Ferrari, but it’s not just this that makes it so appealing.

Spending a week with the most potent Corvette you can get in Australia has left me with a list of notes on this beast I want to hand over to you. Maybe it will help make your mind up about it or change your mind.

What makes the Z06 the flagship of the Australian Corvette range isn’t little luxuries, but seriously upgraded mechanical hardware, much of it track focussed.

Our test car was also fitted with the Z07 Performance package which adds a carbon-fibre aero kit to pin the Corvette down at high speed while also drawing everybody’s attention to it.

Oh, and then there’s the sound of the largest flatplane crank V8 ever to go into a production car… and look out for your ankles - let me explain…

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.