There’s a question that, until today, I had no idea that people were asking: why was the Bentley Flying Spur never offered as a pickup? Quite how many people have been pondering this is a mystery, but a ute-loving Bentley owner was clearly so enamoured with the idea of a Flying Spur with a cargo bed that they actually went through the rigmarole of making it a reality.
Come on, who doesn’t love an unconventional pickup? Australia adores them, with eight-cylindee utes bringing a healthy dose of V8 Supercar awesomeness to Aussie tradesman for decades. BMW even had a crack at in 2011, when it too decided to slap a cargo bed in the back of its E92 M3 as part of a highly elaborate April Fool’s Day stunt. The problem is that no one found it funny because the prospect of a German ute from the masterminds at BMW M was rather alluring. To not put it into production after dangling it in front of us seemed, frankly, a tad cruel.
A Flying Spur, though? It might not be to everyone’s taste – and I’ll get onto the obvious momentarily – but big engines in cars that are, theoretically, designed to carry bricks, logs and livestock is never not going to be cool. And they don’t come much bigger than a 560hp, twin-turbo 6.0-litre W12, which doesn’t make it the fastest ute on the planet – but it does come awfully close.
That’s not the only thing that’s recognisable from the donor car. The Flying Spur pick-up was put together by DC Customs, which has a quick overview of the process and a few snaps to go along with it at the link here. The car originally started out as a non-descript silver Flying Spur, before the rear half was radically modified to accommodate a cargo bay. However, the Flying Spur ‘Decadence’ (as DCC called it) doesn’t look all that suited to hard labour, with the rear bed doing away with hardwearing aluminium tread plates, instead being lined with strips of teak to mimic the deck of a luxury yacht. Perfect for sunbathing while you’re being chauffeured through the streets of London, even if it does look like a recipe for load-lugging disaster.
The ’decadence’ continues on the inside with two-tone caramel leather, brown carpets and what appears to be walnut veneer (happy to be proven wrong, wood experts of PH). Further changes seem to have been made since the initial build, namely black suede in the middle of the seats and on the centre of the steering wheel. It won’t come as a surprise that the paintwork isn’t factory, either, while the silver bonnet isn’t a nod to the car’s original scheme and is instead an Aston Martin colour, for some reason. It certainly looks as though it’s been built to a high standard, far from a man-in-shed weekend project that you’d normally expect for a car of this ilk.
It should do, given that the ad claims that the whole process cost the previous owner £120,000. And if you fancy a piece of ‘Decadent’ pickup pie for yourself, then you’ll need to hand over £149,950 of your hard-earned cash. I know, you can get a Flying Spur of this era for around ten per cent of that price, but what would that get you? Rear seats, doors and a boot? Not exactly a teak-decked cargo bay, is it? Besides, you can earn some of the money back by using the Flying Spur pickup for what it was intended for: picking things up, and moving them at pace for a fee. Come for the purple Bentley ute, stay for the flawless business tips.
1 / 9
