The Year’s Two Best

Bentley		Caymen

The Bentley Continental GTC is the convertible version of the fabulously successful Continental Coupe.  When VW bought Bentley a few years ago, a revolution was beginning in the super-expensive car market.  BMW had bought Rolls-Royce and planned a completely new car.  Aston Martin was being rehabilitated by Ford under Dr. Ulrich Bez, a German known for his abilities with high-performance cars.  Mercedes-Benz launched Maybach to counter BMW’s Rolls.  And Ferrari started to remake sister-brand Maserati as an alternative to the dominant Germans in the $100,000 class.  At the same time, VW was resuscitating Lamborghini and Bugatti, too.

All of this rested on a collective assumption that there was a world market for super cars that would support higher volumes than ever before.  And thanks to new demand from China and Russia, plus western prosperity, most of the cars mentioned have succeeded.

Arguably, the star of the lot is Bentley.  They’ve found the hot button to move people upmarket from Mercedes and BMW, and to cater to a would-be Ferrari owner who’s not quite sure he (or she) wants that much “spirit”.  The Bentley’s 190 mph top speed will be used about as often as a Range Rover’s off-road ability.  But that’s only a bragging point anyway.

The Bentley’s real appeal is in its extraordinary beauty, inside and out, line and material, feel and sound.  There really is nothing else like the Bentley, and it’s so well done one could make the case that, at only $190,000, it’s a kind of bargain.

As strong as this car is in all its car qualities, its look-at-me factor is its dominant feature.  For those who want to be highly visible, this is the car of choice.  For the rest of us, a lower profile Audi might be preferable.

The other most beautiful of this year’s new car crop is the Porsche Cayman, a classical distillation of all the best aesthetic and technical qualities of Porsche’s over the years.  The golden yellow coupe we drove was another “look-at-me” car, mostly because of the bold color.  But it attracts a different breed of lookers – technically rather than socially attracted.

Porsches have always been all about driving.  If you don’t love to drive, this car is wasted on you.  But if you do, I’ll argue that this car has to be your number one choice.  With a starting price of about $50,000, it’s not even made out of unobtanium.  In fact, for those of us who abhor excess weight and unwieldiness in cars, the fact that this car is cheaper than a Cadillac Escalade makes you wonder.

What is it about America’s attitude toward cars that results in a market for Escalades?  A partial answer:  how we teach driving.  Driver education is all about fear – awareness of danger, all the bad things that could happen – caution, wariness.  Not much about acquiring skills.

The same fact might also explain why neither of these ultra-desirable cars is American.  The Europeans generally respect driving skills, and tend to respect cars that lend themselves to skillful driving.  It’s no accident that German-produced cars all but own the quality car market worldwide.  Think Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and German-owned makes like Bentley and Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Bugatti.

Part of the US fear of cars has to do with speed.  We’ve had the phrase “speed kills” drummed into us.  A recent British Department of Transport study suggests that we’re attacking the wrong issue.

Police studied 147,000 accidents in the UK last year.  Five percent of those were blamed wholly or partly on speeding.  Another five percent were blamed on alcohol impairment.  Total: 10%.  Sixty-six percent were blamed on driver error or reaction – read: lack of skill.  Remember the 10% caused by speed or alcohol?  Highway police here spend way more than 10% of their time on those two factors, thereby ignoring factors that cause many more accidents.  Of course, it’s easier to raise revenues by chasing speeders.

Another interesting finding:  only 2% of accidents were caused by vehicle defects.

Looks like our “safety” establishment has it all wrong.  How can we solve problems if we can’t even identify them accurately?  Remember how Ralph Nader got us to blame the cars instead of the drivers and spawned an industry suing car manufacturers?  If he really cared about safety, he might have studied driving habits, encouraged worthwhile driver training, and done some good.