Bentley Continental GT Speed Review
Bentley Continental GT owners are being naughty. That is the apparent justification for this new hot version of the highly successful Continental GT launched in 2003 to great acclaim, simultaneously marking the "new" Bentley, now under Volkswagen ownership. Some owners had decided that 552bhp was not, ahem, enough, so they were retuning the engines to gain more poke – but then they blew up. Hence the new Speed, which gives a 9% uplift to 600 horses, a slight acceleration gain, and a 4mph top speed increase to just over the double-ton – making this car the fastest production Bentley ever made.
On one hand, the big Bentley does what a $200k car with the name “Speed” must: go fast. With a gargantuan twelve cylinder engine displacing 6.0-liters with twin turbochargers, the Speed version of the Conti in Bentley Continental GT trim cranks out 600 horsepower. That’s a lot of ponies, even for a two-plus-two that weighs some 5k pounds. Enough gas-gargling go to prope
l the Anglo-German monster from zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds.
And then there’s the Speed’s party trick for Bentley Continental GT : the leather-lined leviathan can pass 200 miles an hour, as no doubt verified via a shaky-cam documentary by some very wealthy, very stupid Russian oligarch on YouTube. By the same token, American Speed owners can talk about going 200 miles per hour while cruising to the country club for tee time.
On the other hand, so what? Yes, the Bentley Continental GT ’s forward pace is a rush– though any real sports car at 30 percent of the cost (and half the weight) would shame you at a stoplight. But that’s so… jejune. More importantly, and disappointingly, Bentley’s beast handles no more than competently, as a trillion dollar suspension and all wheel-drive go into battle against 5200 lbs and something called “gravity.”
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