New Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid does 86mpg. If you believe that…

The new Bentley Flying Spur Plug-in Hybrid is Bentley’s most efficient car to date with CO2 emissions of just 75g/km and 85.6mpg.

The new Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid arrived last summer as Bentley gently treads towards electrification with its second hybrid model. And it has proper appeal.

We loved the old Flying Spur, and the latest Flying Spur, although not as imperious as the Mulsanne whose place in the Bentley range it now occupies, is even better, and with a plug-in hybrid powertrain lurking beneath it promises the best of all worlds.

In fact, the PHEV in the Flying Spur is a chunk more capable than the one in the Bentayga, delivering a total of 536bhp and 553lb/ft of torque from its combination of a 2.9-litre V6 petrol and electric motor, and is good for 62mph in 4.3 seconds, not much slower than the V8 Flying Spur.

Thanks to that impressive PHEV setup, Bentley has now declared that the Flying Spur Hybrid is the most efficient and most economical Bentley ever sold. 

That’s because, with WLTP certification now in, the official economy figures are 85.6mpg and CO2 emissions of 75g/km.

Now, we don’t want to be too sceptical, but like all WLTP figures for PHEVs it’s just bonkers. Yes, you can run as an EV a chunk of the time thanks to an 18kWh battery and, if you did that a lot of the time, you may get silly mpg. But the quoted range if you’re all filled-up of 500 miles seems highly unlikely. But not as unlikely as 85.6mpg.

Still, we wouldn’t say no.