Bentley breaks ice world speed record

205mph run nets Bentley ice record. Celebratory special edition model coming to Geneva.

Auto Express Car Reviews

By Tom Phillips

15th February 2011

It’s the Bentley that dances on ice! The Crewe firm is celebrating setting a new ice world speed record of 330.7kmh (205.48mph). Four-times world rally champion Juha Kankkunen drove a Continental SuperSports Convertible to the new record on the frozen waters of the Baltic Sea.

Kankkunen is no stranger to setting top speeds on ice, as he set the outgoing record of 199.83mph in a Continental GT in 2007. However, this time he smashed the 200mph barrier with a specially modified SuperSports convertible.

The car featured a full roll cage and a parachute for safety, extended front and rear spoilers for extra stability and 20-inch Pirelli winter tyres. The car also ran on E85 bioethanol.

The record attempt was held on a 16.5km track on a 70cm-thick layer of sea ice off the coast of Finland. The record attempt was driven on a 1000m long section of the track, with the average speed of a run in each direction taken to calculate the record figure.

Wolfgang Dürheimer, Bentley’s new Chairman and Chief Executive, said, “The ice speed record is an amazing feat by Juha Kankkunen. We will be celebrating this achievement with a very special ‘extreme’ Bentley, which will be the most powerful model ever to bear the famed Winged B emblem.”

A limited edition of just 100 examples of this most extreme Bentley, called the SuperSports Plus, will be made and the car will make its global debut at the Geneva Motor Show.

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3 Comments

FALSE DREAMS

By track AE are you referring to a 'bush track' or race track??? About the only way you will get such an obvious colour contrast is between snow/ice, and tarmac. Methinks it almost impossible to keep any car in a straight line, let alone do 200mph, on ice!!
Might be wrong, but I cant see the acolade being much use. They going to put in their car brochures "and our cars go faster than anyone elses.....on ice. Wow, that'll drag in the punters, not.
I like Bentleys, and I'm just a bit bemused why they would make such an effort for a fairly meaningless achievement.
How much was Juha paid to risk life and limb???

By barina47 on 28 February, 2011, 3:00am

Congratulations Juha and Bentley

This is a great demonstration of a team setting out to achieve something that hasn't been done before, and succeeding.

If people didn't do things like this, we'd still be living in caves.

barina47 - you don't know what you're talking about.

By cat23 on 16 April, 2011, 12:17pm

Ephemeral Record Breakers

Without belittling Mr Kankkunen's achievement, one has to ponder Bentley's motives for staging this record attempt.

As mentioned by barina47, I can't imagine a Bentley salesperson wanting to inject this fact into his sales patter, It would come over as a bit crass. Also, if Bentley were that serious about the record, why on earth did they use a 'soft top' for the attempt? Surely they would have achieved much higher speeds in a hard top Continental GT, simply because of the better drag coefficient? I am perplexed...

By sgtgrash on 17 May, 2011, 12:40pm

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