The week before Thanksgiving, I was driving a Bentley Flying Spur S, the luxury auto manufacturer’s flagship sedan, around Southern California. I had one the entire week I spent in Los Angeles. All went well—the worst that occurred was when I accidentally scratched the enormous passenger-side wheel well while pulling up to a home poker game in Culver City.

At the same time that I was cruising around SoCal, Bentley received quite possibly the worst possible press for a car manufacturer, when a New York couple driving a Flying Spur, which the company touts as “the pinnacle of luxury” and “a unique combination of exhilarating performance and exquisite craftsmanship,” hit a concrete barrier while going 100 m.p.h. The car launched into the air and exploded on fiery impact, and the couple died.

If it hadn’t been for the news, I would have been unironically thrilled to be cruising this car around in L.A. traffic. It was an “Azure” model, which, true to its name, was not just blue, but the bluest blue you could possibly imagine, designed for people to notice in traffic. And, as often happens when you’re driving a high-end car on crowded roads, people noticed, waving and........

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