Bently offers some of the most luxurious cars on the planet, which very often, also have quite an interesting relationship with speed. If you are not an automotive enthusiast, you could very well be mistaken for thinking that big and heavy Bentleys are just for cruising – extra comfortable but not very fast. And you’d be wrong, very wrong.
Prety much all new Bentleys are also very fast, but if the car has the word Speed in it, you can count that it delivers on that front especially well. The new Bentley Continental GT Speed is four wheel drive luxury coupe, which now comes with four wheel steering, and electronically controled rear differential, to make sure it can go around corners too.
Its latest iteration is equipped with the upgraded 6.0 liter twin turbo W12, which now offers 650 HP and 900 Nm of torque. That is enough to catapult this british behemoth to 100km/h in just 3,6 seconds and onwards to a top speed of 335 km/h. Bentley states that this is their most capable performance-focused car ever made, and we tend to believe them as the numbers are just insane. The eight speed dual clutch transmission is calibrated to make a shift in half the time the standard car needs to shift, adding to the feeling of more focused car.
All that mass also needs stopping. New carbon ceramic brake rotors save a whoping 35kg of unsprung mass, and are clamped by huge 10 piston calipers which is enough to stop this heavy coupe without a problem. The biggest improvement in performance is still their new e-differential which works together with four wheel steering to improve turn in, and makes the car feel more agile than ever before.
In the visual front there is not so much to discuss. There is a darker radiator grille and bumper grilles, subtly re-profiled sills, a Speed badge on each fender, and a set of 22-inch wheels in bright or dark finishes. On the inside you get diamond quilted leather, some red accents and some more speed badges.
With almost 25% markup on the regular Continental GT and not so much gain in performance, we struggle to rationalise this Continental GT Speed. But if you have to combine luxury motoring with twisty roads and you just have to have the ultimate bragging rights, this just might be a car for you.
