The 2004 Bentley Continental offers technology and tradition

By Gary Anderson, Special to the Town Crier

When we journalists first drove the new Bentley Continental GT coupe, to be introduced in the United States early next year, we couldn’t decide how to describe it.

Is it a state-of-the-art performance automobile with luxury touches or a luxury automobile that uses state-of-the-art technology to deliver cutting-edge performance?

To confuse things further, this newest of new automobiles is unlike anything Bentley has produced before. Yet the Continental GT is a direct product of the traditions that link the present to Bentley’s past.

This Bentley is the first all-new automobile to roll out of the doors of the old factory in Crewe, England, since the great sell-off a few years ago. Unable to keep Rolls-Royce/Bentley profitable, Vickers had put the automobile company up for sale with BMW and Volkswagen as the major contenders.

Volkswagen outbid BMW and bought the company, including the factory in Crewe, but discovered as the dust settled that it hadn’t bought the Rolls-Royce trademarks.

BMW then bought the Rolls-Royce trademarks and built a new factory in the south of England, where a new work force is now engaged in producing the new Rolls.

After the purchase, Volkswagen pulled the old Rolls-Royce letters off the buildings, then invested nearly $500 million in updating the factory and designing the new Bentley Continental GT coupe.

The new car draws its styling cues and performance goals from Bentley’s best postwar automobile, the Mulliner-bodied R-type Continental coupe produced from 1952 to 1955. The Continental, at the time, was the fastest production car on the roads. Using aircraft technologies, it was capable of carrying four passengers across Europe in comfort at average speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.

Now being introduced in Europe after Bentley won the 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans in June, the new Bentley also harkens back to the late 1920s and the glory days of the Bentley Boys. While Bentley was still independent, the Flying B was first across the line at Le Mans four years in a row, culminating in 1929 with a sweep of the first four places in the race. Only four years later, the company was bankrupt. It was sold to Rolls-Royce, where the brand languished as the “cut-rate Rolls” until the purchase by Volkswagen.

Now Bentley is back and proving it with one of the most amazing combinations of automobile luxury and performance ever built.

By any driving measure, the Continental GT is breathtaking. With four passengers and a weekend’s worth of luggage or two golf bags in the trunk, the car can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than five seconds; if law and sensibility didn’t intervene, it could keep on accelerating to a top speed of 198 mph.

Needless to say, that’s one heck of a ride to the golf club.

In the cabin, the driver and passengers are cosseted in hand-stitched leather, matched-grain wood veneers and the finest woolens. Plastics or synthetics simply wouldn’t fit within the Bentley traditions.

More than half the floor space at the completely rebuilt Bentley factory is devoted to the wood and leather shops that create the interiors. With most of this work requiring handcraft skills, it is fortunate Bentleys are built with the work force that has been building Rolls-Royces and Bentleys at this same factory since World War II.

The power comes from a brand-new 6-liter, W12 engine, developed by Bentley and Volkswagen engineers and manufactured at the Bentley plant in Crewe. To answer the obvious question: A W12 engine has 12 cylinders arrayed in two banks of six in a “V” from each other, with every other cylinder in each bank offset from the one in front of it so that each bank forms a shallow “V.”

A turbocharger sits atop each bank of cylinders, with the combination capable of producing an astounding 552 horsepower.

Even more impressive, the engine produces 479 pound-feet of torque beginning at 1,600 rpm. In nontechnical terms, that is 50 percent more acceleration force than a Cadillac weighing the same, and the power is available right from idle.

This extreme torque loading required design of a completely new six-speed transmission. The transmission can be left to shift automatically in a comfort or sporting mode. If the driver prefers, gears can be selected using the shift on the console or paddles under the steering wheel rim.

To bring the car to a stop, massive disc brakes — 15.9 inches in front, 13.3 inches in the rear — have been fitted into the 19-inch wheels.

In our afternoon drive through English country lanes, we found we had to be careful when pushing either the accelerator or the brake. In both respects the car performs so much better than other cars that we could easily startle other drivers by overtaking more quickly — or braking more abruptly — than they expected.

With this performance, the car still handled as one would expect of a Bentley with racing heritage. The four-wheel-drive system gives the driver great control under all weather conditions.

Control is electronically enhanced by a traction and stability control system that continuously monitors not only the relative speed of each wheel to avoid skids, but also the front-to-rear pitch and side-roll. When safe limits are exceeded, the computer will modify the throttle opening and the braking at individual wheels faster than any person could manage, until the car is in equilibrium again.

Bentley and Volkswagen engineers worked magic in one more area: the suspension. Rather than springs and standard fluid shocks, the Bentley uses air springs and infinitely variable shock absorbers.

The system easily absorbs bumps while providing a solid feeling of control on corners. It also has the capacity to adjust to successive bumps by varying the shock absorption, so that the car maintains a smooth ride regardless of road surface.

All of this cutting-edge technology is packaged in a body that borrows styling cues from the 1950s Continental. Though not what one might call streamlined, nevertheless the body has a coefficient of drag of 0.32, less than all but a few cars on the road.

Perhaps the most amazing statistic, however, is that the new Bentley will be priced at just a hair under $150,000. Taking into account luxury, performance, interior