Lamborghini Aventador vs Bentley Continental

What's the difference?

Lamborghini's Aventador S is the last living link to supercars of old. Wild-looking bedroom-poster material, gigantic anti-socially loud V12 that actually spits flame and the kind of performance that will rustle the jimmies of even a seasoned supercar driver.

It harks back to a time when supercars actually sucked, but it didn't matter because they were proof you had both the money and patience to nurse it into life and then wring its neck, because that was the only way it made any sense. While the Huracan is a thoroughly modern supercar, the Aventador is an unashamed, unabashed, hairy-chested, head-banging, rock ape.

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.