Bentley has built a brand new Continental, and this time it has stopped pretending that the car is only about arriving quietly at a country hotel while wearing loafers. This one wants to be driven. Properly. Hard. Possibly while laughing.
It’s called the Continental GT S, and if you prefer your Bentleys with the roof removed and your hair rearranged by expensive air, there’s a GTC S as well. Both sit in that delicious middle ground where luxury hasn’t yet strangled fun, and speed hasn’t turned everything into carbon fibre misery.
Under the bonnet lives a V8, which is good news already, but Bentley hasn’t stopped there. It’s bolted an electric motor to the thing, because modernity insists on such behaviour, and the result is 680 horsepower and 930Nm of torque. Those numbers aren’t impressive on paper anymore because everything is fast now, but on the road they matter. A lot.
Stamp on the throttle and it lunges forward like it’s been insulted. Sixty miles an hour arrives in 3.3 seconds, which is sports car territory, not “large, leather-lined grand tourer with room for golf clubs” territory. Keep going and it’ll do 190mph, at which point you’ll discover just how tightly Bentley stitches its interiors.
The engine sounds magnificent too. There’s a sports exhaust, and Bentley hasn’t neutered it. You get a deep, muscular V8 beat, the sort that makes tunnels irresistible and roundabouts an excuse. The hybrid bits don’t kill the theatre. They just sharpen the response.
And yes, before you ask, it can waft silently for about 50 miles on electricity alone. You can glide through town without waking the neighbours or frightening small dogs. Then you leave town, prod the throttle, and all that civility evaporates in a thunderous rush.
What really matters here isn’t just the power. It’s the chassis. Bentley has thrown everything at this thing. All-wheel drive that even thinks for you, torque vectoring which pushes you out of corners, clever dampers, active anti-roll bars and software so advanced that it could belong in a fighter jet.
You get an electronic limited-slip differential and all-wheel steering for the first time on a Continental GT S ! The car feels smaller than it is, keener to turn, less interested in ploughing on when you get enthusiastic.
Drive it gently and it’s calm, planted, utterly unflustered. Switch to Dynamic mode and it wakes up. The rear starts to talk back. You feel the car rotate, feel the weight shift, feel involved. Turn everything off and it will even let you play, which feels faintly outrageous in something with this much leather and this many speakers.
Visually, Bentley has dressed it in a darker suit. All the shiny chrome has gone. In its place is gloss black everything: grille, trim, badges, mirrors. It looks meaner, more purposeful, like it’s late for something important.
The wheels are 22 inches and they fill the arches perfectly. You can have them subtle or full stealth, depending on how much you enjoy attention at traffic lights.
Inside, it’s still unmistakably Bentley. Thick hides, proper craftsmanship, the smell of money. But there’s a sportier edge. Two-tone upholstery, fluted seats, and this suede-like Dinamica material on the wheel, the seats, the doors. It grips your hands and reminds you this isn’t just a mobile cigar lounge.
Piano black trim comes as standard and if you want carbon fibre or darker metal finishes, Bentley will happily oblige. They always do. The cabin feels focused without losing the ability to cross continents without leaving you broken and bitter.
This car sits neatly between the softer Azure models and the full-blown Speed, which is essentially a ballistic missile in a Savile Row suit. The S makes sense. It feels like the sweet spot.
Bentley says this hybrid setup beats the old W12 for power, torque, and performance. More importantly, it feels alive. It has character. It encourages you to drive, rather than simply arrive.
And that’s the point. This is the most driver-focused Continental Bentley has made.
