There’s mystery afoot. The Bentley has developed a judder in the steering at speed, so we took it to Dubai Bentley dealer Al Habtoor’s service facility. And we found Evidence, with a capital E.
In order to determine what was causing the judder, the techies at Habtoor looked at the most obvious suspects – the wheels. Our 20-inch alloys were whipped off the Speed and stuck on a road force testing machine, which simulates the wheel’s contact with the road and uses clever computer magic to determine if anything’s wrong.
As it turned out, the front left wheel didn’t need computer magic. As soon as it started spinning on the machine, I could see it was mis-shapen, bouncing like a cam instead of spinning smoothly like a…well, like a wheel.
So, we had a damaged rim. Weirdly, the front right rim was OK, although the tyre had deformed. So it seems one of us in the office has clobbered something – probably a speed bump or pothole – hard enough to write off an alloy wheel. Except none of us remember doing it. So who’s the culprit?
As it turns out, it may be the case that we didn’t realise we’d done anything. The Speed weighs the best part of two-and-a-half tonnes, and alloy wheels aren’t made of the world’s most hardy material.
