Test drive the fastest Bentley - Continental GT

Driving a Bentley is almost like a movie or a novel. To get the story going, you need a map, not the one in Treasure Island, but Google. Native navigation gets confused at junctions and as a result leads us to the edge of the cliff 

With long metal handles that block air vents, dial gauges and a diamond pattern on genuine leather seats, the Bentley Continental GT is made up of timeless, timeless values. But we also have a map from the past, and now we are standing on the edge of a hefty pit, five meters deep and twenty meters long. It arose on the site of the road a relatively long time ago - the edges had time to thoroughly swam in the rain.

Driving a Bentley is almost like a movie or a novel. To get the story going, you need a map, not the one in Treasure Island, but Google. Multimedia is not able to connect to the omnipotent service, while standard navigation gets confused in the roundabouts and, as a result, leads us to the edge of the cliff. Plus, it's raining - not the best weather to experience the fastest ever Bentley Continental GT Speed ​​with an even more powerful engine and all-new Black Edition styling. The trip to the Nürburgring, where the final of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup race will take place, becomes a story of comic suffering of two bourgeois, in the style of Wodehouse.

The convertible in the Black Edition specification, despite the gloomy name, turned out to be multi-colored. There are not so many elements of the shade of beluga caviar - 21-inch wheels, a radiator grill and glass frames. Everything here is built on a contrast too bold for a traditional brand - the silver gray bodywork is combined with red calipers, side skirts, splitter and diffuser. The same red accents in the shade of the body parts illuminate the blackness of the interior at night. But neither the color contrast nor the hand-carved carbon fiber panels can change the atmosphere of the museum inside. Here the entire history of the British brand is meticulously collected: the roaring victories of Le Mans in the 1920s, the merger with Rolls-Royce, an attempt to revive the sporting spirit under the leadership of Vickers. The VW group, which received the brand in the late 1990s, gave Bentley new technology, four-wheel drive and an intricate W12 engine, while carefully preserving its heritage. The most controversial thing about the Continental GT is just from Volkswagen: bulky gear shifters behind the wheel and paddle shifters too low.

In the meantime, the navigation got entangled in the roundabout again and froze, recalculating the route. You can imagine that at this time at the headquarters of Bentley, a gray-haired employee put on his glasses and went to the paper map. There, with the help of a compass and a curvimeter, he calculated the optimal path for us and sent the result by an urgent telegram. Bentley is not exactly the car of choice for high technology, and all the values ​​of the British brand are concentrated in the pre-digital era. Any smartphone has excellent navigation with detailed maps, and tracks can be switched with buttons on the steering wheel. The driver will still have to deal with the touchscreen at least occasionally. For example, the stiffness of the shock absorbers and the clearance height (air struts allow the body to be raised by 35 mm) are controlled by virtual sliders. At the touch of a finger, the touchscreen reacts with pauses, as if asking permission from Buckingham Palace. A fireplace or a portrait of King George would have looked more natural in its place.

The Speed ​​version, shown in 2014, became the fastest Bentley with a top speed of 331 km / h and 327 km / h for a convertible. Two years later, the minders slightly raised the output of the turbo unit: the power increased from 635 to 642 hp, and the torque from 820 and 840 Nm, and now it is available from 2000 to 5000 rpm. The maximum speed limit remained unconquered, but acceleration from standstill to 100 km / h decreased by a tenth of a second.

Thick glass windows are flooded with rain, on the masts above the autobahn there are 130 km / h restrictions burning, and straight sections where one could press the "gas" on the floor, as luck would have it, almost everything is being repaired. The Continental GT Speed ​​is simply not capable of keeping within the permitted limits. The huge coupe stands on a straight line, not moving, and the driver does not feel at all the speed and danger of a wet road. You are guided by the speedometer and by the sound of the engine - if the six-liter unit has become clearly audible, then the car is already going very fast. The speedometer needle easily passes the 200 mark, but the speed ceiling seems very distant and unattainable.

The Continental GT Speed ​​is a very fast and very powerful car, but it does not dispose of crazy racing and adrenaline rush, it is politely cold, a little arrogant and slightly distanced from the road. Its air suspension, although understated, is devoid of sporty uncompromising, even in the toughest mode of shock absorbers, it softens the gait of large wheels, and the steering settings combine good feedback and ease of effort. In addition, the large convertible weighs under 2,5 tons - it is almost two centners heavier than the coupe and its stern is loaded with a folding roof mechanism. It is also surprising that on a steep exit from the track, the rear axle of the car begins to float - the speed is too high, and the wide tires lose grip.

A coupe with a V8 engine under roughly the same conditions drives more confidently and later slides the rear axle due to the lighter weight and different weight distribution. The suspension and steering settings are more sporty and the closed body is naturally stiffer than the convertible. The V8 S version with a four-liter turbo engine, boosted to 528 forces and 680 Nm of torque, accelerates to 4,5 km / h in 12 seconds, just two tenths slower than a convertible with a W308, and its maximum speed is limited at around 3 km per hour. The same engine is on the racing GTXNUMX and has an incredible sound - you press the gas pedal, and the piston fighter of the Second World War takes off.

It is interesting that the same four-liter unit is installed on the Audi S8, but on the sedan it "sings" not at all in a retro style. Bentley tried so hard to sell the "cheaper" eight-cylinder Continental GT that it came close to the status car with the W12 and seriously threatens it. Isn't that why the minders squeezed everything possible from the Continental Speed ​​engine to win back even a tenth of a second? But you can't argue with another argument - the V8 is more economical and is able to turn off half of the cylinders completely imperceptibly at low speed. Well, how more economical ... If the W12 on average should not burn more than 15 liters per 100 km, the "eight" in the same conditions saves four liters of 98th gasoline. In fact, it turns out 19 liters versus 14 with a little. For Europe, with its wind turbines and solar power, these are outrageous numbers.

The road leads to a narrow bridge and a semicircular arch in the fortress wall, into which a car can hardly squeeze. Behind the wall began a fabulous town with multi-colored half-timbered houses, gabled roofs and undulating, cobbled medieval streets. You ride as if inside a Christmas ball and try not to touch the gas pedal, otherwise the roar of the V8 will shake the ball and snow. You sneak on four cylinders and still feel like an ancient copper smelter, poisoning everything around with smoke from a brick chimney. If the Continental GT were a hybrid, it would be possible to quietly drive past this gingerbread town on electric drive. But in any case, there is no chance to go unnoticed - for a short drive through the fabulous town, several Bentleys gathered a crowd of spectators and, I bet, we are in every smartphone of a Chinese tourist.

“I was in Moscow several years ago at the invitation of Mаrussia Motors. Very, um, traditional manufacturing, ”diagnosed John Wickham, who led Bentley's racing team in the early 2000s, when the company re-established itself at Le Mans. He now advises many motorsport firms, and this legendary man at the wheel of a Continental GT Speed ​​convertible takes me on a tour of the track.

Many will recognize him and welcome him, although civilian Bentleys are already the center of attention for the Nürburgring race weekend. A couple of previous-generation client cars have also crept into the column, but their more modest decor is not striking - the Bentley is a Bentley and is at least admirable.

Wickham slows down the car a lot before turning, presses against the curb, puts the convertible on a flat trajectory and in one throw catches up with the coupe driving ahead with a younger and hotter driver. He is fantastically calm and slowly continues talking about Marusya and the new aluminum Bentley Continental GT - a racing car based on it will be lighter and faster. The roof is up, but we talk without straining our ligaments, and the air shield, similar to the wing of a small plane, prevents the storm in the cabin. The pace of the "excursion" jumps, passages at a speed of 200 km / h are replaced by sections where we slow down at the command of yellow flags. The racing Seats that had competed here before us flew off the track and covered it with rubble. A thick fog fell on the track the day before, it complicated the qualification and crumpled the racing schedule.

The less time remained until the final of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, the more nervous they became in the Bentley M-Sport boxes, located under the bored VIP lounge. The mechanics had a sleepless night - the day before, at qualification, car number seven failed the brakes, and it flew off the track. Racer Stephen Kane was not injured, but the car was damaged. I had to urgently deliver another Bentley and rearrange the engine from the seventh car on it - so, replacing only the chassis, we managed to avoid a double penalty, but still one of the Bentleys had to start from the pitlane. The second car started from position 12.

For the final race at the Nurburgring, Bentley and the leader, Garage 59 in McLaren, were only a few points apart. And the M-Sport team had a chance to win the race. But after the traditional walk on the starting grid, doubts arose. The racing Continental GT3 lost more than a ton of weight, lost all-wheel drive and a luxurious interior, but its opponents resembled predatory mechanical monsters: a Lamborghini Huracan sprawled like a stingray, a Mercedes-AMG GT grinning thin fangs, a fantastic McLaren. Some cyborgs in black overalls and masks are walking between them, long-legged beauties are standing, as if grown in a test tube. The riders of the M-Sport team are ordinary young guys, like the Bentley Boys from the 1920s, and Andy Souchek sports an old-fashioned Tim Birkin-style mustache.

According to the results of the first hour of the race, the crew of the eighth car of Maxim Sule, Wolfgang Ripe and Andy Soucek was seventh, after the second hour 14th and finished 20th. On the contrary, car # 7 had worse starting conditions due to the penalty, but from 35th place after the second hour of the race it moved to second and finished ninth. The victory at the Nurburgring went to the faster Lamborghini Huracan of the GRT Grasser team. And the main favorite Garage 59, despite a disastrous performance in the final race, became the winner of the season, gaining 71 points. The Bentley team received exactly the same amount, but their competitor won two stages this year, and therefore gained an advantage.

If you think about it, not a bad result for a car without major changes in production for 13 years. The Continental GT is still the most popular model of the British brand. Every year it becomes more powerful, overgrown with special versions, but gradually it approaches a cliff, which can neither jump over nor go around.

“The next generation of the coupe will be built on a platform that is the same as the new Porsche Panamera, which has been designed with our needs in mind. Our new Continental GT will receive state-of-the-art safety and multimedia systems. We will significantly reduce weight with aluminum - the percentage of steel in the body structure will be very small, ”says Bentley's head of engineering, Rolf Frech, and his voice is drowned in the rumble of the Lambroghini Huracan flying along the track. The set of engines will be traditional: the coupe will not receive a diesel engine available for the Bentayga in the foreseeable future, but it will acquire a hybrid modification with the ability to move on electric traction. Spy shots show a coupe with oversized headlights in the style of the Bentley EXP 10 Speed ​​6 concept - slightly sportier, but with familiar contours. A radical change of image is not in the nature of Bentley, and we, in essence, will see the same Continental, but faster, lighter and able to silently penetrate the Christmas ball without raising a storm.

	Bentley Continental GT V8 S		Bentley Continental GT Speed ​​Convertible
A type	Coupe	Cabriolet
Dimensions (length / width / height), mm	4818 / 1947 / 1391	4818 / 1947 / 1390
Wheelbase, mm	2746	2746
Ground clearance, mm	No data	No data
Cargo space, l	358	260
Curb weight, kg	2295	2495
Gross vehicle weight, kg	2750	2900
engine's type	Turbocharged petrol V8	Gasoline W12 turbocharged
Working volume, cubic meters cm.	3998	5998
Max. power, h.p. (at rpm)	528 / 6000	633 / 5900
Max. cool. moment, nm (at rpm)	680 / 1700	840 / 2000
Drive type, transmission	Full, AKP8	Full, AKP8
Max. speed km / h	309	327
Acceleration from 0 to 100 km / h, s	4,5	4,3
Fuel consumption, average, l / 100 km	10,7	14,9
Price, $.	176 239	206 (+ $ 264 for the Black Edition package)