Bentley ContiGT
REPORT 5
£ 159,900 OTR/£200,345 as tested/£3,000pcm
WHY IT’ S HERE
Is living with luxe all it’s cracked up to be?
DRIVER
Ollie Marriage
LET’S PLAY WORD ASSOCIATION. I’LL NAME A CLASS OF CAR, YOU SAY the first motor that comes into your head. Ready? Go… Hatchback. Sports car. Supermini. Off-roader. Have a think.
Done that? Here’s what I reckon you said: Golf, 911, Fiesta, Defender. These are cars that define the class in which they compete. You know what comes next: GT. Go again. It can only be the Bentley Continental GT, can’t it? Last month we tested it against the McLaren GT and Polestar 1. Stripped down to the nitty-gritty of long-haul driving – the characteristic that defines this class above all – both were found wanting.
Ollie Kew drove the Bentley to the south of France, commenting “it’s a wonderfully insulated car. Not just from its own tyre noise and engine, but how it dampens away the whoosh of spray from trucks or sirens blaring. It’s like driving along with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones on.” This silence amazes me every time I get out, shut the door and again notice there’s no B-pillar. Two glass windows butting up against each other, only a slender rubber seal between them, and yet no noise makes it through to my ears less than a foot the other side. It’s uncanny.
But beyond the silence, there’s so much else that goes into making this car a peerless cruiser. Ollie cited the sumptuous, enveloping seats and matrix LED headlights; I’d add the easy-to-use lane keep and radar cruise, the engine’s bottomless torque, and the car’s sheer weight. This last gives it momentum. I put it in italics for a few reasons – it sits solidly on the road, feels as unstoppable as a superhero and, when you lift off, appears not to lose speed at all. Leave the dynamic mode dial in default B-for-Bentley mode and, if you lift off at motorway speeds, it disconnects the clutch and glides onwards. Which, when you have 2244kg shoving at a 0.29Cd drag factor, actually turns the Conti GT into a perpetual motion machine.