BLOWN APART

History has taught us that if the British car industry has one strength, it’s creating success from unlikely origins: think MGF, Land Rover Discovery and countless others. And so it is with the pair we have here, both of which took an ageing design and created a car which won universal praise.

In the case of the Bentley, no vehicle this large and this heavy has any logical right to offer such cross-country pace yet the basic design underpinning the unlikely hot rod stems from the 1965 Silver Shadow.

The Daimler meanwhile, was derived from the Jaguar XJ40 which may have appeared as late as 1986 but which had been in development since the 1970s. Smaller and lighter than the Bentley, it’s still a big car yet offers the impressive combination of performance and refinement which was for so long unique to Jaguar products.

Bentley Turbo R

Before going any further, it’s worth addressing the elephant in the room: if you have your heart set on a Turbo R, then nothing else will probably do and although you might