For Crewe's architecture and engineering teams, the new Bentley Continental GT auto is an befalling to set a adventurous and agitative administration for one of Bentley's a lot of admired names - the Continental. The seminal and awful acknowledged Bentley Continental GT alien in 2003 represented the aboriginal footfall in Bentley's renaissance and authentic a accomplished new bazaar segment. It was a affluence GT alms accomplished account that remained accurate to the Bentley admirable touring spirit.
Now the new Continental GT 4-seat auto builds on the success of its iconic predecessor, capturing that GT spirit but with even college standards of design, engineering, luxury, craftsmanship, activating performance, accustomed acumen and refinement.
A beautifully sculptured new physique gives the Bentley Continental GT auto an even crisper, added authentic appearance. The abreast autogenous offers new levels of berth design, abundance and hand-crafted luxury. The seats, for example, accommodate even greater abutment and rear leg-room; a across-the-board dashboard even added appearance and modernity. The new touchscreen infotainment arrangement appearance avant-garde navigation, Google Maps and ball while the latest Balanced Mode Radiator apostle technology and Dirac Dimensions™ agenda complete processing bear added audio quality.
Bentley's acclaimed 6-litre, 12-cylinder, twin-turbocharged powertrain now has a aloft ability achievement of 575PS (567bhp/423kW) and 700Nm (516lb ft) of torque and this is akin to a new Quickshift manual which enables bifold downshifts. Thanks to avant-garde FlexFuel technology it can aswell run on both accepted unleaded petrol (gasoline) and acceptable bioethanol (up to E85) or any mix of the two.
In backward 2011 an all-new, high-output 8-cylinder engine will aswell be accessible to order. This avant-garde ability assemblage will bear a 40 percent abridgement in emissions compared with the W12 engine and will action a class-leading CO2 emissions-to-power arrangement with Bentley levels of achievement and refinement.
Both engines are accompanying to an all-wheel drive arrangement with a adventurous 40:60 rear-torque bent (compared with the 50:50 bent of the aboriginal Bentley Continental GT), minimising understeer during harder cornering and acceptance the accomplished disciplinarian to ascendancy the car's band and antithesis via absolute burke control.
"The new Continental GT is an automotive plan of art, with superb adroitness and elegant, abreast design. It drives like a supercar, but after the accepted sacrifices in ride or practicality. It is a car that you can adore every moment of every day." - Dr Franz-Josef Paefgen, Chairman and Chief Executive
QUALITY AND DESIGN INTEGRITY
Inspired by the iconic Bentleys of the past, Bentley's architecture aggregation beneath the administration of Director of Design, Dirk van Braeckel, has created a thoroughly modern, sculptured body, congenital with avant-garde assembly technologies to ensure the accomplished standards of superior and physique integrity.
Aluminium Super Forming technology is active to actualize the foreground wings and the cossack lid. This action heats the aluminium panels to about 500 degrees Celsius afore abstraction them by air pressure. By application a individual breadth of aluminium, no seams or adjustment are required.
The latest physique architecture techniques bear crisp, awful authentic affection curve and anatomy to every breadth of the exoteric design. The accustomed ability curve and rear haunches - echoes of the aboriginal 1950s R-Type Continental - now accept even bluff radii to actualize awful audible surfaces, bringing the feel of a absolutely coachbuilt car to the new coupe.
The GT coupe's new attending is bolder than ever. The archetypal Bentley cast radiator grille is added upright, while the new headlamp design, in acceptable four-lamp format, has admirable jewel-like account including eye-catching, LED daylight-running lamps.
At the rear, Bentley signature 'floating' LED lamps extend about the corners of the wings, emphasising the new coupe's amplitude and bent stance. The clue is added by 41mm at the foreground and 48mm at the rear than the antecedent model. The bootlid architecture has a able 'double horse-shoe' motif, evocative of the new Bentley Mulsanne, while flared egg-shaped bankrupt tailpipes reinforce the new Bentley Continental GT's antic credentials.
The appearance of the new Bentley Continental GT coupe's physique is aswell added aerodynamic afterward all-encompassing wind adit analysis. In affiliation with a ambit of all-encompassing underbody refinements (including caster accomplished and bankrupt aerodynamic aids) the GT's accessory of annoyance has been bargain to 0.33Cd and the lift at the foreground and rear axles has aswell been bargain to actualize greater adherence at college speeds.
The new Bentley Continental GT is defined with 20-inch admixture auto as standard, with, for the aboriginal time on the Continental family, the advantage to advancement to 21-inch designs. Three styles of caster are offered - a 20-inch five-spoke adaptation and two 21-inch Elegant and split-rim Sports variations, which appear in a array of chromed and corrective finishes.
"The new GT auto has an even stronger antic appearance than anytime before. It is an awfully aesthetic and adequate 2+2 Grand Tourer but with the heart, body and looks of a supercar." - Dirk van Braeckel, Director of Design
With an absolutely hand-crafted interior, the Bentley Continental GT's berth sets new standards in clarification and affluence to actualize a beautiful amplitude in which up to four humans can relax in absolute comfort.
The apparatus animate and dashboard cautiously answer the aerial wings of the Bentley burden and are ancient from the accomplished superior soft-touch leathers. New touchscreen technology and chrome-bezelled dials are housed aural this activating cockpit area, which rises from the centre animate in the anatomy of badly alike 'wing' buttresses.
The arresting and different 'Cobra' architecture seats are chiefly adequate acknowledgment to the addition of the latest body-supporting abstracts which use circuitous foams to accommodate benevolence at aboriginal blow but with accomplished abutment over best journeys.
The seats can be defined with front-seat blast as able-bodied as a avant-garde beating arrangement with 10 alone beating beef and alone ancillary airbags are provided as accepted for all passengers. Foreground seatbelts affection a new electrically-operated automated presenter, authoritative buckling-up effortless. Driver knee airbags are accepted fitment.
The new Bentley Continental GT offers superb accustomed usability. The new slim-line foreground seats with scalloped backs aswell accommodate a added 46mm of legroom for back-seat cartage and simple admission to the rear cabin.
No added Grand Tourer offers such absorbing levels of clarification acknowledgment to the avant-garde noise-suppression technology that includes acoustic glazing, under-floor bouncer and hidden anti-vibration panels throughout the interior.
The berth is akin with soft-touch leathers, a abounding ambit of copse veneers, cool-touch metals and deep-pile carpets - all hand-crafted in Bentley's unrivalled workshops at the branch in Crewe, England. The absorption to detail even extends to applying a UV balance to the copse veneers to assure from bleaching, appropriately ensuring they can be enjoyed as new for decades to come.
Every covering adumbrate is still sewn beneath the alert eye of Bentley's awful accomplished craftsmen and women. By accumulation ingenious, angled 'ramps' abaft the leather, the autogenous designers accept created sharp, categorical administration lines, while advancement a soft-touch.
Other simple yet applied functions cover a powered cossack as standard, Electronic Park Brake with Move Off Assist and anew designed, leather-lined aperture stowage bins with an chip canteen holder.
Perhaps the a lot of beautiful new accumulator accessory in the new Bentley Continental GT is the alluringly designed, folding, disposable case advised to authority items such as keys and pens and which can aswell be slipped into a abridged or bag. Crafted from veneers to bout those of the coupe's interior, the case (available as a amount option) is accomplished with inlaid Bentley wings, satin-chromed and leather-lined, and is anchored in a alcove aloft the accompanying drinks holders in the centre console.
"The new GT auto autogenous combines form, acumen and innovation. Our assignment was to construe the aboriginal architecture sketches for the car's berth - which were absolutely extreme, about advocate for a Bentley - into the final design. The aftereffect is a cockpit that moves the Continental GT on to the next generation." - Darren Day, Senior Designer
CLASS-LEADING INFOTAINMENT SYSTEMS
Complementing its abreast cabin, the new Continental GT aswell appearance avant-garde new touchscreen technology with affluent map adumbration and a 30GB on lath harder drive.
The 8-inch awning displays the car's audio system, telephone, ride and abundance settings and the actual latest aeronautics system, which uses both an in-car hard-disc drive and a DVD amateur to admission avenue data. It aswell employs activating aeronautics to adviser you about areas of abundant traffic, finds destinations application geo-tagged photos from an SD anamnesis agenda and is Google Maps-compatible (market specific).
The infotainment system, with 7 chiffre postcode entry, uses a aggregate of touchscreen controls and archetypal bent rotary switches to action burning account and bright feedback. The clear interface of the awning is engineered centralized to ensure its visuals are absolutely in befitting with the appearance of the interior. Look carefully and you will see that the bent switches on the awning are 'virtual' echoes of the bent switches below.
The Bentley Continental GT's new infotainment arrangement aswell provides the ultimate in in-car audio entertainment. An eight-speaker complete arrangement is offered as accepted employing the latest Balanced Mode Radiator technology. These different compact, flat-panel speakers accommodate aberrant accuracy with a actual advanced abundance range.
An 11-speaker Naim for Bentley arrangement - created alone for the Bentley Continental GT by British audiophiles Naim - employs advocate Dirac Dimensions ™ agenda arresting processing. This industry-first technology creates a basic 'sound field' absolute of apostle blueprint to bear concert hall-quality complete reproduction for every addressee wherever they may be sitting.
The Bentley Continental GT auto aswell allowances from blast and music amateur connectivity, agenda television (where available) and DVD cine playback. Music can be played and controlled anon from an iPod® as able-bodied as from a six-disc CD changer, SD agenda clairvoyant or anon from the car's hard-disc drive, which can abundance up to 15GB of music.
The Bentley Continental GT is set to accept a best of two actual characteristic high-performance engines. In accession to the new 575PS adaptation of Crewe's acclaimed 6.0 litre W12 powertrain, a new high-output 4.0-litre V8 engine advantage will be alien in backward 2011.
The new 4.0-litre V8 engine honours Bentley's ecology charge to bear a powertrain that achieves a 40 percent advance in CO2 emissions. The new V8 is getting advised accurately by Bentley's engineers to bear all the animating adeptness and torque alike with the marque. The new Crewe-built engine will aswell action a class-leading CO2 emissions-to-power ratio.
At launch, the new Bentley Continental GT auto is powered by the latest change of Bentley's acclaimed 12-cylinder, 6-litre twin-turbocharged engine, now calibrated to accommodate even greater performance, acknowledgment to increases in power, torque and ammunition efficiency.
Designed in a different 'W' configuration, it is the a lot of bunched and technologically avant-garde 12-cylinder engine in the world. Four camshafts and 48 valves acquiesce the engine to breathe calmly and advice to accomplish the characteristic Bentley beachcomber of torque. It is aswell able of active on petrol (gasoline), E85 bioethanol or any mix of the two - all from a individual tank.
In 2008, Bentley appear a extensive ecology programme that included a 15 percent advance in powertrain adeptness and the acceptance beyond the Bentley archetypal ambit of FlexFuel technology by 2012. Bentley's FlexFuel models are able of carrying abeyant CO2 reductions of up to 70 percent on a 'well-to-wheel' base - the altitude of CO2 appear by a ammunition from its assembly (well) through to its agitation or deployment (wheel).
To ensure that the adeptness and torque generated abide connected (whatever the fuel) an avant-garde Ammunition Superior Sensor continuously monitors the arrangement of the fuels used. It again guides the Engine Ascendancy Unit to acclimatize the engine's timing. This provides the seamless adeptness supply for which Bentley engines are renowned, and ensures there is no accommodation on achievement if application fuels that actualize lower CO2 emissions.
Further revisions to the new Bentley Continental GT coupe's engine cover low friction, failing apparatus which acquiesce the W12-format engine to rev even added freely, while the latest engine administration arrangement and twin, low-inertia turbochargers are optimised to ensure basal turbo lag.
Overall, the Bentley Continental GT auto is 65kg lighter than its antecedent acknowledgment to reductions in all areas of the car from engine apparatus through to new seats. With its adeptness achievement aloft by 15PS and torque by 50 Nm - to 575PS (567bhp/423kW) and 700Nm (516lb ft) - the aftereffect is a 6 percent advance in the new GT's power-to weight-ratio, authoritative it able of accelerating from aught to 60mph in just 4.4 abnormal (0-100km/h in 4.6 seconds) with a top dispatch of 198mph (318km/h).
The added adeptness and torque are transmitted to the all-wheel drive arrangement via an uprated six-speed Quickshift transmission, which behindhand about-face times (to just 200 milliseconds). The revised gearbox aswell has the adeptness to bear bifold downshifts (sixth to fourth gear, for example) and improves dispatch beyond the absolute accessory range. To cope with the added adeptness and torque, the all-embracing accessory set of the six-speed ZF chiral is aswell strengthened.
Positive torque during downshifts is accomplished through engine and gearbox cyberbanking ambassador alternation for added burke and ammunition bang during the overrun, replicating chiral burke 'blips' for absolute rev analogous . During chiral upshifts, ammunition and agitation are cut briefly to accord faster automated about-face times through torque reduction, aswell convalescent about-face superior and durability.
"The W12's added adeptness and torque and Quickshift chiral accord the new Bentley Continental GT with instantly attainable supercar achievement beyond the complete rev range. At the aforementioned time, Bentley's beat use of FlexFuel technology underlines our advancing ecology commitment." - Brian Gush, Director, Anatomy and Powertrain, Engineering
ALL-WHEEL DRIVE FOR OPTIMISED RIDE AND HANDLING
Both engines are accompanying with a state-of-the-art, all-wheel drive arrangement employing an avant-garde Torsen differential. This ensures safe yet activating sports car administration in all alley altitude and all weathers.
In the new coupe, the adeptness breach has a 40:60 rear bent for a decidedly added antic feel in agreement of administration and mid-corner acceleration. However, it can acclimatize anon the adeptness breach amid the foreground and rear auto depending on the accessible grip. In addition, an uprated Cyberbanking Adherence Ascendancy (ESC) arrangement provides added aegis and anchor whatever your active style.
The new Bentley Continental GT's anatomy delivers the optimum ride and administration balance. The advanced foreground and rear clue allowances activity and handling, while solid aluminium cast-forged, high-stiffness foreground abeyance uprights and aluminium force die castings at the rear plan in affiliation with a redesigned foreground anti-roll bar and retuned bounce and damper settings. The aftereffect is bigger acknowledgment and adherence at all speeds.
Continuous Damping Ascendancy (CDC) consistently monitors the car's attitude and poise. By adjusting the abeyance settings hundreds of times a additional it can accommodate a appreciably adaptable ride at low speeds and added ascendancy as speeds climb. It can aswell lower the car in 'V-Max' approach for added adherence at the accomplished speeds.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
• ENGINE
o Type: 6-litre twin-turbocharged W12
o Max Power: 567bhp / 423kW / 575PS @ 6000 rpm
o Max Torque: 700Nm / 516lb/ft @ 1700 rpm
• TRANSMISSION
o ZF 6-speed automatic with quickshift and steering wheel-mounted paddleshift
o Driveline: Continuous all-wheel drive (40:60 rear bias)
o Ratios:
1st - 4.17
2nd - 2.34
3rd - 1.52
4th - 1.14
5th - 0.87
6th - 0.69
Final drive: 3.526
• BODY CONSTRUCTION
o Steel monocoque
• BRAKES
o Front: 405mm ventilated discs (optional 420mm Carbon Silicon Carbide, cross drilled)
o Rear: 335mm ventilated discs (optional 356mm, Carbon Silicon Carbide, cross drilled)
• WHEELS AND TYRES
o 9.5J x 20" (optional 9.5J x 21")
o 275/40ZR 20 (optional 275/35 ZR21 linked to option wheels)
• STEERING
o Type: rack & pinion, power assisted, speed-sensitive ZF servotronic
o Turns lock to lock: 2.6 turns
o Turning circle: 11.3m
• SUSPENSION
o Front: Four link double wishbones, computer controlled self-levelling air suspension, with anti roll-bar.
o Rear: Trapezoidal multi-link, computer-controlled self-levelling air suspension, with anti roll-bar.
o Damping: Continuous Damping Control, tuned for dynamic performance.
• DIMENSIONS
o Wheelbase: 2746 mm / 108.1 in
o Overall Length: 4806 mm / 189.2 in
o Width (across body): 1944 mm / 76.5 in
o Width (including mirrors): 2227 mm / 87.7 in
o Overall Height: 1404 mm / 55.3 in
o Fuel Tank: 90 litres / 20 gallons / 24 US gallons
o Boot Volume: 358 litres / 12.6 cu ft
o Kerb Weight (EU): 2320 kg / 5115 lb
o Gross Vehicle Weight: 2750 kg / 6063 lb
• PERFORMANCE
o Top Speed: 318 km/h (198 mph)
o 0-100 km/h: 4.6 s
o 0-160 km/h: 10.2 s
o 0-60 mph: 4.4 s
o 0-100 mph: 10.2 s
o 50-80 km/h (30-50 mph): 1.7 s
o 80-120 km/h (50-75 mph): 2.9 s
• FUEL CONSUMPTION (EU Cycle)
o Urban: 25.4 l/100km (11.1 mpg)
o Extra Urban: 11.4 l/100km (24.9 mpg)
o Combined: 16.5 l/100km (17.1 mpg)
o CO2 emissions: 384 g/km
• FUEL CONSUMPTION (EPA Cycle)
o City Driving: 12.0 mpg (US)
o Highway Driving: 19.0 mpg (US)
o Combined : 14.0 mpg (US)
