TAKE care as you wrap your hands round the steering wheel of your new £168,000 Bentley Flying Spur - it's taken a skilled craftsperson more than three hours to stitch the five meters of thread holding the carefully chosen leather to the wheel's rim.

It's just one example of the almost obsessive attention to detail shown throughout the interior of this new 207mph four-door saloon from the Bentley plant in Crewe.

For instance, all 350 unique leather pieces needed in the cabin are attached to 60 bespoke components using over three kilometres of thread to make up a complete Flying Spur interior, and each passes through the hands of 141 Bentley craftspeople.

All leather hides found in the interior of the Flying Spur remain sustainably sourced from Northern European bulls, entirely as by-products of the meat industry. More temperate climate zones ensure there are fewer parasites and the leather remains naturally blemish free.

Bentley customers have the luxury of choosing from as many as 14 interior leather hide colours, which can be complimented by a vast selection of 23 different colours of contrast thread.

The centre piece of the Flying Spur's interior - its steering wheel - is home to some of the most elaborate hand-stitching and leatherwork to be found anywhere in the automotive industry.

A cross-stitched steering wheel involves five meters of thread being precisely passed through 352 sew holes in order to achieve 168 distinctive cross stitches.

A single steering wheel is stitched in three and a half hours by a skilled Bentley craftsperson, using a bespoke pair of needles and a motion too complicated to be replicated by machine.

With the use of five separate types of sewing machine, different thicknesses of thread are applied throughout the cabin, contributing to the overall level of complexity and detail underpinning the Flying Spur's interior.

And the four seats of the new Flying Spur require a total of 12 hours to assemble by hand. The stand-out optional detail embellishing each seat's headrest is the embroidered Bentley wings, comprised of 5,103 individual stitches.