Out on the extreme of luxury and performance in the automotive world sits the Bentley Continental, a car that coddles you with perfect coachwork and thrills with exceptional acceleration and handling. For 2011, Bentley delivers an updated exterior, new cabin electronics, and two engine options.
Wayne Cunningham
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
The Bentley Continental GT marks an extreme of automotive luxury and performance, boasting massage seats, noise isolation, and a 60 mph time of 4.4 seconds. For 2011, Bentley redesigned the car, updating its drive train and cabin electronics, and restyling the exterior.
As on the previous version, Bentley uses LED parking light rings around a central projector for the headlights. The headlight casings do not call attention to themselves and are subtly molded into the smooth metal.
The GT in the name stands for Grand Tourer, and Bentley embodies this concept with the car's coupe styling. Twenty-inch wheels are standard on the car, with 21-inch wheels an option.
The most notable exterior design change are the more pronounced rear fenders. The track of the car has also been widened to improve cornering. An active damping suspension and standard all-wheel-drive helps the car handle well in hard cornering.
Bentley's coachwork focuses on fine leather and wood materials. Noise damping, accomplished with glazed glass windows and an aerodynamic underbody, ensures a calming environment in the cabin.
The Continental GT's gauges retain a classic look, but Bentley also places a color LCD screen in the center which, like in sister-brand Audi's models, shows detailed navigation, audio, and phone information.
The Continental GT uses a six-speed automatic sourced from ZF. It is designed to shift in 200 milliseconds, faster than most automatics. It can also double downshift, going from 6 to 4, for example. Rev matching technology keeps shifts smooth and means less wear on the gears.
Bentley's new navigation system is based on a 30-gigabyte hard drive, but 15 gigabytes is reserved for onboard music storage. In some countries, this navigation system integrates with Google Maps.
