Bentley knows its posh carriages are chock-full of chauffeured retirees enroute to polo matches, nepos flashing daddy’s money in Monte, and Kardashians. The less said about the latter the better. Bentley locked the gates at the headquarters, handed the keys of a modified Supersports to the super-sexy Travis Pastrana, and told him to treat it like he stole it, so he did. This was not a polished corporate promo, oh no. It was full-on filmed fiasco of glorious mayhem. Why? Well you might ask.
For one, Travis Pastrana is sexy as hell, but mainly it is perception. For decades, the posh British brand has fought the to polish out stench of “Old Money” cigar-smoked stereotyping. Let’s face it, rich old people are the only ones who can afford a Bentley so the brand has a hard job trying to pretend it is anything other. While the world thinks of Bentley as a cravated mobile library, the brand was born in the fires, the dirt, and oil of those original Le Mans races. Safety was little more than a bowler hat and a dinner jacket, but as least the drivers looked terribly smart during an occasional incineration.
W.O. Bentley didn’t build cars to be quiet; he built them to be “the best in class” at staying together while being thrashed to within an inch of their lives for a full twenty-four straight hours. The somewhat twee-ly named “Pymkhana” project, a plys on the factory’s Pyms Lane address, is the loudest reminder yet that the brand still has a red-hot poker up its clacker.
The Mechanical Deviant
The project started with a simple question. Can we make a Bentley drift? The answer was yes, but only after the R&D doctors took a couple of scalpels to the running gear. They didn’t just tweak a couple of settings, they gutted the car’s soul to unleash its raging temper.
The engineers stripped away everything developed to keep most Bentley owners from spearing themselves into a hedge. The Electronic Stability Control was killed. The electronic Limited Slip Differential was remapped to lock up the moment Pastrana breathed out. In a car designed to blissfully isolate the driver from the road, the team wanted the full bum-on-bitumen treatment. They wanted the driver to feel every sensation as the powertrain scrambled for grip.
Surely the sexiest piece of goods was the hydraulic handbrake. Spliced directly into the eight-speed double-clutch gearbox, this custom lever called “Mildred” by the team, allowed Pastrana to pitch 2,200 kilograms of best British steel sideways into the slenderest of spaces. It turns the ponderous cruiser into a 666 PS brute built to evaporate the very expensive rubber into mere atmospheric haze. To add some literal flare, they bolted titanium skid blocks to the undercarriage. Every time the car bottomed out during a transition, it sent a spectacular shower of sparks across the pavement, making the heavy-hitter look like a low-rider from a music video.
Above: Supersports: FULL SEND with Travis Pastrana Bentley Official
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The 190 km/h Risk
Shutting down a working factory for three days is a logistical headache and a liability nightmare. A crew of 100 people descended on the pristine campus to ensure Pastrana did not accidentally level the place. This was not just driving in circles in a car park. The route took the Supersports centimetres away from high-pressure gas mains and the primary electrical feed for the entire production line. A wrong flick of the wrist in the wrong direction and the whole company would have been sent instantly back to the 19th century, costing millions in lost production time.
To capture the madness, the production team used a first-generation Bentayga W12 as a tracking car. Imagine a two-and-a-half-tonne SUV outfitted with a U-Crane arm, chasing a drift car at speeds hitting 190 km/h through narrow corridors designed for forklifts. It’s a miracle they didn’t take out a wall. The scale of the operation required marshals, fire crews, and medics on standby, just in case the car decided to fight back.
This wasn’t just about the main star car, either. Bentley prepared a back-up car in case Pastrana binned the first one. Both were wrapped in a bespoke, gymkhana-inspired design by graphic artist Deathspray, finished with custom-painted 22-inch wheels. Beneath the bonnet, the W12 engine was left largely stock because, when you have that much torque, you don’t need more power you just need a way to let loose the dogs of doings.
A Century of Thuggishness
To understand why this matters, you have to look at the finish line. As Pastrana slides to a halt, he is flanked by an original 1926 Supersports. A hundred years ago, that car was the ultimate “thug in a dinner suit.” It was breaking the 160 km/h barrier when most vehicles were barely managing a gentle canter. Bentley has always been about brute force wrapped in a veneer of civility, except the Roll-Royce clone era. Those time saw gorgeous Silver Shadows badged as Bentley, but both handled like luxuriously appointed dump trucks.
The 2026 Supersports used in this film is just the modern evolution of that same DNA. It is a car that thrives just at the edge of disaster. The “Pymkhana” car is just a “regular” Supersports without the finesse of finished fillies. It demonstrates what the chassis and powertrain can do when the engineers are allowed to take the condom off. Alistair Corner, the engineering manager, noted that the car became an extension of Pastrana’s intent, dancing around the narrow factory roads with agility of a capering mountain goat.
The Aftermath
Despite the high-speed sprints and the relentless tyre smoke, the only casualty of the shoot was a single broken side mirror. It is a testament to Pastrana’s precision and the engineers who built a car capable of taking such a vicious beating. You can thrash a Bentley, but you can’t easily break one.
The final film is also a playground for the eagle-eyed. There are 12 Easter eggs hidden throughout, ranging from the 1999 Hunaudières concept car to a look at an unreleased electric vehicle. They even managed to get the Chairman and CEO, Frank-Steffen Walliser, to show up in the credits to sweep up the tyre marks Pastrana left behind.
This project was glorious, loud, reckless, and completely unnecessary. That is exactly why it is the best thing to come out of Crewe in years. It proves that beneath the hand-stitched leather and the country-pile-like prestige, Bentley still knows how to build a machine that just wants to scream. It reminds us that the brand’s soul isn’t found in a brochure or a boardroom; it’s found out on the asphalt, in a cloud of smoke, at 190 km/h.
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Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
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