ALL THE KING'S HORSES

DOWNSIZING? HYBRIDISATION? NOT HERE. IN 12-CYLINDER FLAGSHIPS FROM BENTLEY AND ASTON MARTIN, WE BRING THE NOISE TO THE ALPS

- BEN BARRY

THE GOTTHARD TUNNEL is the most direct route between Airolo in the far south of Switzerland and Goschenen, 20km north. It’s way below our feet as we watch evening traffic stream towards its southern entrance on the floor of the valley, its walls sheer mountainsides. We could hop in the Bentley Continental GT Convertible and Aston DBS Superleggera Volante, bound downhill, then sit in a straight line on the A2 north. In the dark. With lorries and fumes. The sat-nav thinks we should.

Pah! One hundred years ago, when Bentley was newly established and Aston only six years old, there was no tunnel, only the Gotthard Pass, carved over the Alps by men with pick axes braving conditions that might have given Edmund Hillary a wobbly lip. Today it’s the longer, more perilous option, but it also happens to be a giant beanstalk of a road that stretches to the heavens and cool evening air above.

Given we’re driving 12-cylinder convertibles built for grand touring and glancing back a century in the rear-view mirror, it feels appropriate to take the longer, older way back to tonight’s hotel, to drive faster but arrive later and celebrate automobiles that stand as the very last of their kind.

Sat-navs off, roofs down, the Aston roars away in gunpowder crackles of exhaust flare and spikes of turbo boost, the Bentley a more dignified kind of very rapid progress with its torque curve like a stiff upper lip and stoic all-wheel drive.