Last year in Britain, slightly more than 5m people died. Over the course of my
lifetime 250m people have died. And yet it was only last week that I saw my
first dead body.
It was lying at the side of a country road near Johannesburg, one of the most
dangerous and lawless cities on earth, so initially I thought it had been
shot. But then, a few hundred feet down the road, I passed a big Suzuki
motorbike, all battered and broken, and just as dead as its owner.
Of course there was no way of knowing the man was dead. He was surrounded by a
thousand emergency vehicles and several million paramedics. But there was
something about the way they moved, a lack of urgency, that gave the game
away.
And it was all confirmed two hours later when I drove back down the same
stretch of road. Because the big broken bike had gone. The ambulances and
police cars had gone. And all bar one of the personnel had gone. But weirdly
the body was still there.
I haven’t been able to get the image out of my head since. Who was he? What
had he said to his wife that morning as he’d put on his leathers and gone
outside to get on his big bike? What was he planning to do later that day?
Or at work the following week? Had he planned a holiday this year? What
would his kids do now, without a dad?
One minute he’s a human being thundering down a lovely road in an area known,
ironically, as the Cradle of Humankind. The next he’s meat, a nuisance, a
handful of ticks and crosses in a police investigator’s report.
Doubtless his wife will have spent the time since wailing and weeping and
wondering why the bloody hell he’d gone and got himself a motorbike. And I’m
with her. Why indeed?
You get hit by lightning and it’s bad luck. You die in a car accident and it’s
one of those things. You have to drive to get about and people die while
driving. You have an accident at work and it’s the same story. You get shot
by a robber and even then you can still see the logic: “If I steal your
wallet and then kill you, I stand less chance of being caught.” But dying in
a motorbike accident seems so completely futile.
I know they’re a thrill. I know it gives you a buzz to hurtle down a country
lane on a sunny day while encased entirely in leather. I know all that. But
one tiny mistake, which might have nothing to do with you, and you’re a
memory, you’re a smudge in the hedgerow. You’re playing a lottery where the
prizes are small and the cost of failure is just gigantic. And I don’t get
that.
In Britain bikes account for just 1% of all road transport. Yet they account
for nearly 20% of all fatalities. Of course, dead bikers do provide a
valuable public service in that people with fatal diseases can have new eyes
and fresh spleens, but having seen the accident in South Africa last week, I
think we could go further. Instead of taking the body away, why not just
leave it in place?
All of us fear death, but when you actually see it, you become even more
determined to give it a wide berth.
After seeing a body for the first time I have genuinely slowed down a bit.
Coming home from London the other night I pulled out to overtake when I was
98% certain the road ahead was clear. But then an image of that poor man’s
twisted head popped into my head and I abandoned the manoeuvre before it had
really begun.
Yesterday, while driving into my local town, a mother was walking down the
pavement with a little girl of three or four. Normally I’d have slowed and
covered the brake in case the toddler leapt into the road, but after my
South African experience, I damn nearly stopped.
And I can’t tell you how that felt when, moments later, the little girl did
indeed run into the road. That dead biker, then, 6,000 miles away in
Johannesburg, had unwittingly saved the life of a little girl in England.
You may think this all a bit too convenient. A bit too editorial. But it
happened. I really was thinking of the dead man, and braking when the girl
ran out. If I’d been doing 30 I’d have hit her. But I was doing 10, maybe
less. So I didn’t.
Anyway, onwards and upwards to the car I was driving that day. The Bentley
Continental GTC, which of course is a drop-top version of a car I don’t like
very much.
The problem is simple. I know that beneath that two-door body and those
chromed organ-stop ventilation controls the Continental is a Volkswagen
Phaeton. And even though the two cars feel markedly different, I can never
really get that thought out of my head.
It’s the same story with my Bang & Olufsen phone. Electronically
it’s a Samsung, but I paid a billion pounds for all that style and design,
and I’m sorry, every time I use it I feel a bit of a berk.
But the drop-top Continental is different. Because there’s no roof the wind
blows away any sense that you’re in a Phaeton. It really does feel
completely different, and then there’s the noise. My God. What a wonderful
sound. It’s a sort of mellow bellow. I’ve never heard it in the coupé
before, but in the soft top it’s there all the time, sticking its tentacles
into your ears and giving you a nice warm rinse.
Do not, however, imagine that this is some kind of sports car. It isn’t.
Bentley, as Ettore Bugatti once observed, makes very fast lorries. The
Continental GTC has more in common with a Scania than a Ferrari, and that
holds true even when you push the sport button. This just makes everything
less comfortable, so I quickly turned it off again.
You waft in this car. Oh, it’ll waft pretty quickly, thanks to that sonorous
twin-turbo W12, but there’s no satisfaction from taking a nice little
left-right switchback and hitting the apexes just right. In fact you feel a
bit silly.
Better to kick back and cruise. Select the precise sort of sound you want from
the hi-fi, snuggle into the infinitely adjustable seat . . . and relax. It
is a very, very nice way of covering miles.
Like falling asleep in the bath and waking up somewhere else.
That said, there are a few issues that drove me mad. The boot opens and closes
electrically. And extremely slowly. And if it touches the top of your
suitcase on its way down, and it will because there’s the tonneau cover in
there as well, it’ll crawl back up to the top again. People have arms,
Bentley. And we don’t mind using them.
Likewise, if you want to let someone in the back, the front seats slide
forward as though they’re being pulled along by a koala. And while it may
have seemed like a good idea when the computer geek said the radio could
present drivers with a choice of all the stations in range, it wasn’t.
Because the other morning it took 20 minutes to find Radio 2.
The worst thing about this car, though, is hard to put my finger on. Maybe
it’s the lack of sportiness. Maybe it’s the size. Maybe it’s the footballer
ostentation or the pale blue paintwork that had been teamed with a cream
leather interior.
I don’t know. But I do know this. All the time I was behind the wheel I was
slightly terrified other road users might think it was mine.
Vital statistics
Model Bentley Continental GTC
Engine 5998cc, 12 cylinders
Power 552bhp @ 6100rpm
Torque 479 lb ft @ 1600rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Fuel 16.5mpg (combined)
CO2 410g/km
Acceleration 0-60mph: 4.8sec
Top speed 195mph Price £130,500
Rating 3/5
Verdict Sit back and enjoy the waft
