Bentley Continental GT
No longer just a rebadged roller, the Bentley is its own catch-me-if-you-can car now.
By Nigel Moll - December 1, 2008
The best thing that could have happened to Rolls-Royce and Bentley did happen about a decade ago, when Vickers offloaded these once-revered but faded brands to BMW and VW, respectively. Now a Roller is a Roller again, a shamelessly magnificent execution of automotive opulence and serenity.
Bentley is back, too, and no longer the rebadged Roller hobbling along on its musty legend as the eminently respectable motorcar for the sporting upper crust. Rolls-Royce and Bentley had been stablemates since Walter Owen “W.O.” Bentley’s company hit hard times in 1931, and for a while the two brands retained distinct personalities. Introduced in 1952, the Bentley Continental R (inspiration for this GT) was named for performance more attuned to the roads of Continental Europe than Britain’s country lanes. The 1950s and early 1960s were the waning days of the distinctive Bentley Continental, so it is only right that the VW-backed Bentley for the new century should revive the name.
The sporting Bentley of yore was bought and driven (not chauffeured) by old money, and in the boot of a 1960s Continental you’d likely find a set of MacGregor Tourney Tommy Armour Silver Scot golf clubs in a leather Tuff-Horse bag. There might be some Purdey shotguns or a Fortnum & Mason wicker picnic hamper in there, too. In the ashtray there’d be a Dunhill briar pipe and in the glove compartment, beside a tweed cap, you’d find a tin of ready-rubbed tobacco, maybe Player’s Whiskey Flake.
Enough already. That’s the nostalgia, and it bears little relevance to the car on these pages. One of the first new Bentley Continental GTs I laid eyes on, a few years ago in London, had just been unloaded from a sealed car transporter and driven to the lowest level of an underground car park near Trafalgar Square, where it joined an intoxicating array of rare cars with license plates from all over the world, gathered to compete in the Gumball Rally.
Nearly every inch of this particular Continental except the windscreen was as black as its tires, and it bore East European license plates–Hungarian, I seem to recall. A nouveau riche entrepreneur, I speculated, was out to have some fun with his winnings, tussling with the Ferraris, Astons, Porsches and Lambos parked alongside.
Muscular Style
For me, this chance sighting said something about who buys a new Continental GT. It’s not a car for someone who necessarily treasures the brand’s old aura of pipe smoke, leather bonnet straps and the Brooklands race circuit. No, this is a car for new money (at least what’s left of new money these days–Bentley went to a three-day workweek late this past summer). It moves around with subtle but distinctive and muscular style, with immense power and, thanks to taut suspension and all-wheel drive, surprising agility for a car as hefty as this.
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