52 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | APRIL 2019
The longer wheelbase benefits both driving
dynamics and the elegant proportions of
Stefan Sielaff’s quietly beautiful form
PRICE
£175,890
(£210,925 as tested)POWERTRAIN
5950cc twin-turbo
W12, eight-speed
dual-clutch auto,
all-wheel drivePERFORMANCE
626bhp @ 6000rpm,
664lb ft @ 1350rpm,
3.8sec 0-62mph,
207mphWEIGHT
2414kgON SALE
NowData
EFFICIENCY
20.2mpg
(WLTP),
317g/km CO2heated seats and heated steering wheel are able
to rob even a European February of its chill.
And when you’re left with no option but to
raise the roof, the 30mph cut-off means you
can often do it without stopping, even if the 19
seconds the Z-fold roof takes to deploy feels like
an age. Once up, though, the car’s no less comely
inside and perhaps even cosier than the hardtop,
much as a storm watched from a tent feels more
special than one watched from a window.
We’ve one last cascading run of curves ahead,
the road weaving like a lost river between
hillsides left skeletal and blackened by wildfire.
The third-gen Conti’s more capable chassis
has already proved itself in the Coupe, and the
Convertible’s an equally giant leap over its fore-
bear. The body is five per cent stiffer and a full
20 per cent lighter than before, and the longer
wheelbase benefits both driving dynamics and
the elegant proportions of design director Stefan
Sielaff ’s quietly beautiful form. The car also
deploys everything in Bentley’s dynamic arsenal;
a torque-splitting centre diff and all-wheel
drive, torque vectoring by brake, air suspension,
48-volt anti-roll control and the biggest iron
brakes currently on sale.
Ride quality is sublime. The air suspension’s
bigger chambers, together with the forgiving
damping rates the active anti-roll allows the
Conti to run, mean even rough roads are
smothered in every mode bar Sport, with only
the most brutal of irregularities shaking the
structure and prompting a tell-tale wobble of the
head-up display. At the same time the Bentley is
more than happy to get a move on, its keen nose,
fluid and unflappable responses and surreally
good body control adding up to serious corner
speed without a shred of uncertainty or risk. The
set-up’s so friendly and the odds so stacked in
your favour you’d have to do an awful lot wrong
to get into trouble. Sure, a Porsche 911 will stop,
turn and go with more alacrity and as a result
of a more honest, more nuanced and ultimately
more satisfying conversation between you and
the car, but that’s hardly the point.
The point is the Bentley doesn’t endure such
roads but savours them, while remaining a
long-distance machine of almost peerless ability
and extraordinary charm.
BEN MILLERtogether with reams of the stuff you don’t
need but that delights nonetheless. Stuff like
the Rotating Display (a £4700 option) and the
very Bentley moment of drama as it swaps
touchscreen for expanse of flawless veneer, the
tactile and flawless stitching around the inside
of the steering wheel, and the spectacular glow
the Koa veneer takes on as the late-afternoon
Spanish sun pours in and sets the timber’s deeply
lacquered lustre momentarily ablaze.
If that last point is about the car and the
weather, it is one of hundreds that punctuate
every drive in the Continental Convertible. (And
that make its on-paper compromises palatable,
notably a 170kg weight penalty over the Coupe,
a boot tragically almost half as useful – 235
litres versus 358 in the Coupe – and a £16,790
premium). With nothing above your head but
sky, in pours the world: the sun’s warmth as it
breaks through the clouds, the smell before rain,
the chill as you cross from dry tarmac to wet. But
just as it re-works physics in your favour, so the
Bentley only lets in the world’s good bits. There
is no buffeting, conversation is easy beyond the
legal speed limit and, in concert, the air scarf,First drives
First verdict
While compromised by its roof, the GTC is hugely
capable – the fine fundamentals of the Coupe
layered with still greater desirability.
★★★★★W12 not as
instantly lovable
as a V8 but there
is magic here