So you've arrived at your favourite ski resort, but the lifts are closed – what are you going to do? Well, Bentley has a plan. We're in Gstaad, Switzerland, and courtesy of the firm, we've tried the winter sport of ski joring. Traditionally, this sport involves strapping on your skis and being pulled along by a dog or a horse. Instead of that, we're using a 570bhp Continental GT.
Video: watch our man ski joring with a Bentley Continental GT
Heavy snow has closed the official ski joring track here in the sport's birthplace of Rougemont, but that's not stopped Bentley and its official ski partner Zai in our quest to have some fun. So a snowy car park is commandeered and we're given some tips by Franco Moro. He's ski joring royalty, with 27 years experience and 16 championships, and his advice is simple: Hold on tight.
It's not bad advice, as winter tyres, a 570hp W12 engine and four-wheel drive make for a brisk start. It's odd being so close to the rear of a moving car, even more so when it's sliding around a corner and you're being sprayed by slush from its tyres.
Speed isn't easy in the car park, so we pack up our Zai skis – which thankfully aren't the Bentley Supersports editions, which cost 7,500 Euros a pair – and head off to find a suitably snowy road. What we find isn't perfect, but it's good enough for a 40mph run, which is about as fast as a normal horse might run.
We're keen to go faster, but conditions don't allow it today. There's an idea brewing, though, and Bentley's got form with cold-weather speed records – the special-edition Continental Supersports ISR is testimony to that. Could we see a ski joring record run? Don't rule it out.
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Top Gear did this 5 years ago with a Jaguar X-Type
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Many years ago (40) a group of my friends and I who owned a mix of MG TCs and TDs did this without skis simply by holding on to the spare wheel bolted on the back of the car - the TC being particularly suitable as the wheel was mounted vertically. An old man in a Morris Minor did the proverbial double-take as we overtook him!