Archive: 2013 Bentley Continental GT v Bylong Valley Way

First published in the March 2013 issue of Wheels magazine, Australia’s best car mag since 1953.

Jesse Taylor revisits a painful childhood memory and a great road in the $370,000 Bentley Continental GT V8. It’s still cheaper than therapy.

I’LL SPARE you a photo but I have a scar on the fleshy sub-prime real estate of my upper right thigh. It’s only small but it glows translucent against its already vitamin-D-deprived surroundings. Like a tiny Uluru, it’s roughly triangular and rises a millimetre or two above the epidermis plains. The scar is from the Bylong Valley Way. More correctly, it’s from the searing seatbelt buckle of a 1977 baby-poo-brown Valiant CL station wagon.

I’d not given the Bylong Valley Way another thought for 20 years until a colleague mentioned it had finally been sealed (in February 2009). But it wasn’t until January last year that I had my first crack on its black-top as a driver. Since then, I’ve fired down its fast and open, and tight and twisty 140km length in a Lexus LFA, Toyota 86, BMW M3, Volkswagen Golf GTI and now, a Bentley Continental GT V8 – take that, shitbox Valiant.

Given its largely flowing nature, the Bylong Valley Way suits big-power cars like the Bentley. It also allows more modestly endowed cars to link the corners together to disguise any lack of mumbo. Power and agility are rewarded on the tighter sections and, while it is now sealed, the surface can be patchy, so it tends to suit cars with a reasonable level of compliance. The grand Bentley GT V8 covers nearly all bases.

Got a day to spare for a good drive? Here’s 980km of (mostly) great roads. There’s no easy way out of Sydney so jump on the Hume and bomb straight to Goulburn. Take the road up through Taralga to Oberon, then the Jenolan Caves Road back to the Great Western Highway east of Lithgow. Turn left to Bathurst via Lake Lyall, Tarana and O’Connell roads. From Bathurst head to Ilford via the Sofala Road, which includes two good hillclimbs. Ilford to Sandy Hollow is via the Bylong Valley Way, then it’s back to Windsor via the Putty Road.