If you’re an assembly worker at Bentley, you must have a lot of patience. That’s particularly so if you’re handcrafting the new 2020 Flying Spur, which Bentley says is the most advanced car it has ever put on sale. Every Flying Spur goes through 84 different assembly stages at the company’s factory in Crewe, England, requiring nearly 200 workers. But what goes into making the most important part of the experience, the interior? A lot of time, and an even greater amount of jaw-dropping fun facts and statistics.
You’ll likely notice, even from photos, that the Bentley Flying Spur’s interior is awash in rich leather. (We loved being assaulted by the leather’s scent during our recent review of the luxury sedan.) Bentley says the leather hides used inside the cabin come from Northern European bulls, sourced sustainably as by-products of the meat industry. Since these future hamburgers with legs live in temperate climates, they encounter fewer parasites, leaving their leather hides free of blemishes. Still, it takes an enormous amount of work to create a finished product from these hides.
Each interior is comprised of 350 individual leather pieces that need to be stitched to or for 60 different components throughout the cabin. To accomplish this task, Bentley needs more than three kilometers (that’s 1.86 miles) of thread per interior. Assembly requires 141 craftspeople working with the more than 14 interior leather hide colors and 13 different colors of thread customers may select. If buyers opt for embroidery on the headrests, that’s another 5,103 stitches those workers have to make.
It takes 12 hours to hand-assemble just the Flying Spur’s four seats. A craftsperson will spend a painstaking three and a half hours on the steering wheel’s stitching alone. This is why craftspeople undergo at least five months of training before being set loose building Bentley interiors
Among the Flying Spur’s interior goodies are massaging seats, crown-cut walnut veneer trim, a 12.3-inch touchscreen, and unique three-dimensional diamond-quilted leather door inserts. But in our recent review, we noted the Bentley Flying Spur is not just about the comfortable interior. Despite its large size, the Flying Spur offers true sport sedan performance, aided by a 626-hp twin-turbo W-12 engine with 646 lb-ft of torque on tap, as well. Top speed is an exceptional 207 mph. If a six-figure SUV is more your speed, the Bentley Bentayga also offers top-notch craftsmanship and customization. It competes in a rapidly expanding super-luxury-SUV segment that also includes the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, and Aston Martin DBX.
Tags: 2020 Bentley Flying Spur Interior
