ADVANCE PARTY
The all-new Continental GT has to be both more engaging and more luxurious than the outgoing model. Bentley’s boffins let Autocar loose in a prototype
The new Bentley Continental GT currently under development is a vast improvement over the outgoing version — which, let’s not forget, has been in service since 2003 — and existing owners should upgrade to the new model at the earliest opportunity. Well, they should if they’re planning to do track days in it.
That, I suspect, is not a great deal of use to anybody who is mulling the purchase of a new Continental GT. We shall have to wait until we’ve driven a production-spec car on public roads, as opposed to a super-smooth race circuit, before we can deliver a full and proper verdict on the new Continental GT.
For now, though, we can report only that the pair of engineering mules sampled for a few laps apiece around Anglesey Circuit in the UK are better suited to high-speed track driving than the venerable outgoing version. No final verdict quite yet, then, but that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate a little.
For what it’s worth, we quietly suspect the new model’s sharper chops will make for a more entertaining and engaging road car. It should also feel much faster in a straight line than the model it replaces. But about all the things that a make a good luxury car — ride quality, long-distance comfort, noise isolation and so on — we can tell you absolutely nothing at all.
Rolf Frech and Cameron Paterson, two of the new GT’s lead engineers, on the other hand, can tell you a great deal.
“The task I gave to my team of engineers,” says Frech, member of the board for engineering, “was to make the new car both sportier and more luxurious than the current car.”
The forthcoming GT is all-new, from the platform it shares with the Porsche Panamera (here in shorterwheelbase form), to the redesigned bodywork.
“The car itself is a four-year development process,” says Paterson, director of whole vehicle engineering. “But we started the platform work with Porsche a good year and a half before that.”
Paterson adds: “To give one example: we went in wanting higher local stiffnesses in the bodyin-white to get better refinement. We had much higher requirements than Porsche. We were able to get those, but if we’d come in a year later, we wouldn’t have.”
The collaborative process also meant Bentley was able to discard the outgoing car’s fixed-torque-split four-wheel drive system in favour of a more sophisticated variable system.
Intelligent use of materials — steel where the engineers need stiffness, lightweight aluminium where they don’t — also means the new platform is more rigid as well as being lighter, which contributes to an overall saving of around 100kg compared with the outgoing Continental GT.
The distance between the A-pillars and the front axle line, meanwhile, has been stretched by 135mm, and the front overhang is much shorter. The weight distribution is better balanced as a result, the new car’s 52/48 frontto-rear split representing a significant improvement over the old car’s 56/44.
Frech says one of the objectives for this new car is to appeal to a younger set of customers: “Even in the last year, however, we’ve seen a shift in the customer base. The US market, for example, is already getting younger. I strongly believe the GT3 motorsport programme has helped a lot. The old-fashioned image of a Bentley driver — the old guy with the hat — has gone because we’ve showed [with the GT3 car] what the Continental is capable of.”
The best way to appeal to a younger generation, I suggest, would be for the new car to be more exciting to drive than the slightly reluctant outgoing model. Before I drive either of the development mules, I’m allowed a few laps in a current Continental GT W12 to refamiliarise myself.
As it happens, I rather like the existing GT, but I’m not going to pretend it’s up to much on a circuit. The heavy nose means it trips into understeer early, the automatic gearbox feels lazy, the column-mounted shift paddles are awkward to use and the throttle response is dim-witted. The GT was never designed as a track car, of course, and it takes only a handful of corners to reaffirm that.
However, it takes just one corner, Anglesey’s very first, which is a heavily banked right-hand hairpin, to realise that its replacement operates on an entirely different level on a circuit. It’s better in every single area by huge amounts.
For one thing, the steering — electrically assisted, whereas the current GT uses hydraulic assistance — is a vast improvement in terms of precision, feedback and accuracy. The front end also gets into a corner so much more willingly, and then holds a much better line, rather than washing out.
Thanks to the clever Bentley Dynamic Ride antiroll system, the body remains uncannily flat in the bends, too. The dual-clutch gearbox is also much snappier, the steering-wheel-mounted paddles are easier to operate and the engine is much more responsive. With more than 600hp on tap, the new car doesn’t have a great deal more power than the outgoing one, but it feels so much more accelerative.
There’s torque vectoring by braking on both axles now, which makes the car nimble and agile, and the new variable four-wheel drive system is much smarter. Most of the time, it powers the rear wheels only, but when necessary, it can divert up to 100% of the available torque to the front axle.
The Continental GT hasn’t suddenly been transformed into some crazed drift monster, but it does feel supremely well balanced and secure under power and there is a useful amount of adjustability in the chassis. The stability control doesn’t feel terribly refined when you really wring the car out, though, the whole body juddering as the car strains against its electronic safety nets.
At least, it doesn’t just abruptly cut drive like the least subtle systems can do.
When exiting tight corners with those safety nets turned off, I was surprised to see great plumes of smoke appear behind the car as the unloaded inside rear wheel torched its rubber. The Continental GT wouldn’t snap into power oversteer, notably, but that manic wheelspin did seem a touch unrefined.
The seating position is vastly superior, too, sitting you low in the car rather than perching you up high. It remains to be seen how any of that translates onto the road, which is all that really matters.
But the signs are that the new Continental GT will be a huge step on from the current model. It really should be, of course: Bentley has had 14 years to think about how Old Faithful could be bettered.