Seven years has passed since Bentley launched the second edition of its best-selling car, the Continental GT. Now, the third-generation coupe has arrived, and is already winning the hearts with its innovative design and dynamic, driver-focused performance
It was 5pm on a friday evening in Gold Coast, Australia and the peak-hour traffic was steadily building up. As we rolled the new Bentley Continental GT to a stop at a traffic light, we felt someone staring at us. Instinctively, we turned our heads to the left and met the eyes of a buff middle‑aged man in a muscular truck. With a warm smile, the stranger pointed enthusiastically to our car, before flashing us a thumbs up. “Do all Bentley owners get a similar reaction when they’re on the road?” one of us wondered aloud. Whatever the answer, it isn’t difficult to understand why the man liked what he saw.
The third-generation Continental GT is definitely good-looking, but Bentley’s designers will have you know that its beauty comes with very careful planning and utilising revolutionary technology.
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Drawing from history
Aesthetically, the coupe’s dimensions remain more or less the same as its predecessor, although you might think otherwise while observing some of its new visual features—a lower bonnet, a broader matrix grille, a faster sloping roof, shorter overhangs and new elliptical tail lights, which bear the same stunning three-dimensional cut-crystal effect as the headlights.
At the same time, you will also notice that the car boasts sharply defined body lines that frame curvaceous surfaces such as the muscular haunches sheltering the rear wheels. This was where Bentley took notes from two classic machines—the original Bentley R-Type Continental and the 1936 Spartan Executive aircraft—and obtained the Continental GT’s elegant new look using a modern technique called Superforming, which heats sheets of aluminium to 500°C to make them more malleable, before placing them over a mould and vacuuming the air out.