The GT S has no more power than the 542-horsepower GT, but comes with a sports exhaust as standard.
The noise. My god, the noise. For so long now we have become used to Bentleys being quiet, refined and with the discretion of a butler as experienced as they are expensive. Full-bore acceleration may have matched an Italian supercar for performance, but instead of an operatic crescendo it was accompanied by a discreet cough of a soundtrack. Perhaps there’s a distant rumble of thunder, but even that would be smothered by the double glazing, the acres leather and the phenomenal sound system.
Not this one. It may only amount to little more than some badges, a few tweaks to the gearbox software and a fruity exhaust, but the new ’S’ version of the Continental GT is a reminder that Bentley was first and foremost a Le Mans winning race team with a reputation as rumbustious as the socialising abilities of the daredevil drivers who piloted its cars.
It’s a tired cliche but the GT S is the true definition of an iron fist in a velvet glove. The performance is no different to the regular GT, thanks to using the same 542 bhp, twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8. And in Comfort or the default Bentley mode there’s really no difference between this and a regular GT, save of course for the S badges, exterior details in black instead of chrome, and how Dynamic Ride suspension with active anti-roll bars is fitted as standard. Sixty miles per hour is dispatched in 3.9 seconds and the top speed is 198 mph.
Priced from $266,000, the Bentley Continental GT S is powered by a 4.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 … [+]
But now we need to talk about Sport mode. Today we live in a world where the Sport button is constantly abused by manufacturers who want to kid their customers into thinking an electric SUV is in some way sporting.
A press of these buttons usually turns the accelerator into an on-off switch eager to hand out whiplash claims with every opportunity, adds artificial and unnecessary weight to a steering wheel that remains utterly devoid of feel, then has the audacity to deliver a soundtrack that is entirely fake, pumped into the cabin through the sound system alongside your new favourite podcast. If ever evidence were needed that the marketing team leads the design of a car, the Sport button fitted to a battery-powered school run-mobile is it.
Plainly this message hasn’t been received at Bentley. Or perhaps it was wilfully ignored. Switch to Sport in the GT S and the engine blares into life like nothing I’ve ever heard, before settling once warm into an omnipresent burble you swear you can feel as much as hear. A car to keep the neighbours happy, this is not.
As well as opening up the exhaust valves and cranking the volume to 11, Sport mode makes big changes to the eight-speed automatic gearbox. It’ll hold onto ratios far longer than normal then shift down aggressively under braking, ensuring you’re always in the right gear for maximum acceleration out of every corner. It doesn’t quite serve up the whip-crack gear shifts of a Ferrari, but instead a simple change to the gearbox’s software has unlocked an entirely new, fully brutish character, never before seen from a Continental GT.
Bentley produces some of the best interiors of any car company right now, in my opinion.
In some cars I switch to Sport mode at every opportunity. The exhaust usually gets a bit louder, the steering weights up a bit, and that’s about it. Not so here. Sport mode in the Continental GT S simple cannot be used all of the time. It can’t really be used in slow-moving traffic at all. It’s too loud and the gearbox holds onto gears for so long that you’ll still be in second at 40 mph and everyone’s eardrums will have burst.
Instead this is a Sport mode fit for purpose. It is to be selected when the road opens up, the traffic clears and the speed limit increases. Instead of giving peacocks the ability to show off while driving laps of West London department stores, it’s a mode to be selected on a quiet country road, for when you truly want to drive in a sporting manner.
Doing so in this Bentley puts its driver in mind of the British brand’s race cars of the 1920s; of the Bentley Boys who dominated Le Mans, of Tim Birkin and his supercharged Blower Bentley, and of the Yorkshire industrialist Eddie Hall, who is the only person to have completed the 24 hours of Le Mans singlehandedly, in 1950, at the wheel of a Bentley modified by Rolls-Royce.
Those old Bentleys were unapologetically loud and so is this one. It still does modern luxury because this is 2023 and a car priced from north of $260,000 simply has to, but a quick switch to Sport mode reminds its driver of what the Bentley badge really stands for.
A 2+2, the Continental GT S has space for four adults, although rear space is slightly compromised.
The rest of the car? You surely already know by now. The Continental GT is one of the true greats of the modern era. Bentley’s interiors are the best in the business; the sound system is absurdly good; the headlights look like crystal whiskey tumblers; the rotating dashboard is an expensive and flamboyant but entirely necessary addition; the performance is everything you’ll ever need; it handles long journeys with aplomb and you can even fit a couple of average-sized adults in the back.
Money no object, the standard GT might just be the perfect car. I would move mountains to have one, then drive it every day, cherish it, keep it forever and ensure my children did the same. Throw in the Jekyll and Hyde ability of the GT S’s Sport mode, and there’s no ‘might’ about it.