Background
When Volkswagen took over Bentley in 1998, it was initially pretty much business as usual, while the German marque had a tug-of-war with BMW over the use of the Rolls-Royce name. But once that had been settled - BMW won, by the way - VW could concentrate on stamping its own personality and character on its acquisition. And that it did, in very handsome style, with the launch of the Bentley Continental GT in 2003, a grand tourer that strikingly reminded everybody that, before it was subsumed by Rolls-Royce, Bentley had been even more about performance than sheer luxury.
The Continental GT was a masterpiece of a machine, and the sort of thing that Bentley couldn’t have come up with without the expertise and resources of a company like Volkswagen behind it. Launched at that definitive location for prestige débuts, the Geneva Motor Show, in 2003, it followed that up with British reveals at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Silverstone Bentley Drivers’ Club Meeting. The ‘Continental’ name was a reference to some of the great coachbuilt Bentleys of the past, and the fastback style with pronounced rear haunches also echoed the glory days of the R- and S-type Continentals.
However, the GT was always intended to be constructed in far greater numbers than its strictly limited edition ancestors. It was about as close to mainstream as a largely hand-built car could get, with the plan being to make the marque more accessible to a wider customer base. For that reason, it was competitively priced - well, in Bentley terms - and had an enticing spec, with a twin-turbo 6.0-litre W12 engine of 552bhp, permanent four-wheel drive, and the ability to reach 60mph in under five seconds and ultimately go on to just short of 200mph. All this, and it looked tremendous too. It was an iron fist wearing a silk glove… and wearing it very well.
The first generation continued to be built until 2011, with plenty of updates and options along the way - some tasteful, others less so. Notable highlights included the four-door variant, the Flying Spur, in 2005 with a convertible version, the GTC, coming the following year. The GTZ of 2008 was a rather bulbous Zagato-bodied variant, while the Supersports of 2009 to 2011 boasted a 621bhp engine. This meant that, for those who just weren’t satisfied enough with ‘only’ approaching 200mph, a top speed of 205mph was attainable, with a 0-60 time of under four seconds. There were other offshoots as well, but you get the general idea; Bentley liked to give its buyers a lot of choice. If you wanted diamond-quilted Alcantara on your doors then, well, that was no problem at all, sir or madam.
