Bentley GT3R Road Test: A Sharper Edge For Bentley's Black Tie Cruiser

Before its arrival, I wondered if the Bentley Continental GT3R might prove a cynical marketing exercise, building off the paint scheme and imagery of the Bentley Continental racers currently circulating tracks in Europe.

Happily, such is not the case, the GT3R possessing a dual personality that expands the definition of Continental, with performance technologies that will surely be evolved for the expected Bentley Speed 6 two-seat sports car.

Set to “Comfort” calibrations, GT3R remains a long-distance grand touring car, a cruiser with a plush ride, easy to live with all day, though combined with a raucous engine and startling acceleration. In Comfort mode, GT3R remains a black tie Bentley. Set to “Sport,” GT3R is livelier and more capable than any 4839-lb. car has a right to be. It is, in simple fact, the quickest Bentley ever made, sprinting to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds with the aid of Launch Control software. When pushed, it’s no track day car—with such girth, it would eat expensive tires at a prodigious rate—but its cornering posture and the sheer good feeling of spearing into a corner is far more than expected of a heavyweight. It's a fabulous evolution of the original Continental R-type.

Walking up to the car, indications this is not a black tie Bentley are the conspicuous carbon-fiber pedestal spoiler, 21-inch black alloys wearing gummy 275/70 Pirellis, and the unavoidable GT3R logos on two fenders. The green flash highlighting the fenderlines makes one wonder if the designer owns a 1960s Lotus Cortina, famous for its white paint and “green flash” down the rear fender. Subtler are the carbon-fiber rearview mirror housings, and the blacked-out grille. Duck your head down to see the serving platter 16.5-inch front carbon brakes and their 8-piston calipers and the mind begins to wonder about the nature of this beast. Yes, 16.5-inch front brakes.

Swing open the door and there’s none of the expected leather and wood of a gentleman’s study. It’s about graphics: dark gray Alcantara quilted with bright green stitching, and substantial carbon-fiber panels covering the doors, dash, center console, rear cowl and much of the rest of the interior. And of course the bright green leather flashes accenting the doors and center console. GT3R’s aesthetic is more Kraftwerk German than elegant Brit, but it works, and fabulously so if you’re open to graphics inspired by the wilder side of Nike basketball shoe design.

Without the dwarfish rear seats of the black tie Continentals—replaced here by a parcel shelf lined in that same quilted Alcantara and carbon-fiber—the driver’s seat can be adjusted so far back that my 36-inch sleeve length is at nearly locked-elbow extension, the steering wheel pinched between the first digits of thumb and forefinger. In other words, American athletes will fit, even if fellows of average height will also find the driving position entirely comfortable. Fitted luggage to match the interior seems mandatory, to snug into the parcel shelf and trunk—ample fitted luggage promises a happy, long road trip with a companion.

Beyond the elegant architecture, the only vestige of the black tie gentleman’s smoking room is the Breitling clock in the dashtop. Then again, graphics of the quilted Alcantara might inspire a wild Brooks Brothers smoking jacket for the Christmas season.

Up to this point, GT3R is graphics and ambiance. Press the Start button and the crackle of a Titanium exhaust and a sharply tuned twin-turbo V8 promise greater delights than a typical black tie affair. With 572 horsepower on tap (592 available for brief moments on overboost), this is a Bentley to inspire dreams. The engine spools out 518 lb. ft. of torque starting at 1700 rpm, and an overboost function can deliver 553 lb. ft. for about 15 seconds when you’re really on it using Launch Control or pulling out of a corner with the throttle pedal mashed.

The first time you let slip the dogs of war, the difference is clear. The engine has a ruthless bass-baritone roar—every schoolboy within earshot will snap his head around and want to grow up to be like you. Back out of the throttle and the crackle and pop from that Titanium exhaust is a life experience. This car sounds better than any turbo engine has a right to. Engine sound in the 21st Century may be created rather than the natural yowl of a 1950s sports car engine, but in GT3R it’s intoxicating. One expects the occasional belch of fire out the exhaust tips, or better still spouts of flame out the carbon-fiber nostrils placed atop the hood. That would complete the esthetic.

Power is fed through a ZF 8-speed transmission and all-wheel drive system that under most conditions biases more power to the rear wheels. But here too, Bentley is playing with sporting technologies to liven up the Continental’s game. Out back “torque vectoring” apportions power left to right, putting all that power to the ground smoothly and to best effect. “Torque vectoring” means when either tire is losing grip, a single brake is tapped for the briefest of moments to slow down the slipping wheel to keep matters tidy. It’s like a stutter step before a change of direction when running on a football field or rugby pitch. There’s also a Launch Control function to deliver that 3.6-second sprint to 60. Up front, similar momentary taps of the brake are used to keep this nose-heavy car from plowing through corners. Admittedly, it is much more eager and able to change direction than the very nose-heavy W12 cars.

In action on my favorite mountain road, acceleration proved…substantial. Better yet, in the sequences of corners where a car can be run hard, one feels the benefits of the vectoring, and the more aggressive Sport settings of the suspension. I was pleasantly surprised at how ably this heavyweight attacked corners. No, it’s not a Lotus Elise. Press hard and one does sense the torque vectoring, as there’s a second layer of performance where GT3R digs in and goes that little bit faster. As Toby Maguire said in the movie Sea Biscuit, “Now, show him the stick at the quarter pole, and he'll give you a whole new gear.” It’s when you push GT3R hard that you realize the seats with special lightweight shells and greater bolstering are needed, the bolster hooking into the lower torso and lower ribs. It’s no mountain king, but GT3R delivers a tangible difference.

Back in the real world, those carbon brakes never properly heat up, squealing like wire brushes on a tin pan. On my mountain circuit, the brakes heated fully, pulling the car down from speeds of 110-120 mph with astounding surety, enough so that I had to recalibrate my brain to wait another second before dipping into the brakes. Fully using them would require greater acclimation and requisite levels of trust to believe this two-and-a half-ton mammoth can stop so easily. I won’t be surprised if in time Bentley quietly offers a retro kit to place steel discs for owners who want day-to-day driving pleasure, and not just show-off conversation pieces. I’d store the carbon brakes in a box and have my dealer retrofit immediately. The engine can be enjoyed every day, all the time. The brakes only give pleasure under extreme circumstances.

Speaking of custom tailoring, if it were mine, I’d also remove one of the two GT3R logos, either from the front or rear fender. I’d supplant the green fender flashes with equally bright green but thin pinstripes. Without doubt, I’d task Bentley for luggage to fit the parcel shelf and trunk, constructed in black leather with green flashing, perhaps that wild green leather as lining.

Bentleys will accommodate anyone, from a Kentucky Derby jockey to a power forward. But proportions of the interior suit a tall man. Six foot ten? You won’t feel like a circus bear stuffed into a clown car. I recall a photo of Shaquille O’Neal or another NBA center stuffed into a “Miami Vice” Mercedes SL. The poor man did not fit. In a Bentley, we find a car scaled for big guys.

Bentley is blessed by an ancient heritage that adapts to the 21st Century with a sense of truth. Under W.O. Bentley, the company built gargantuan four-seat sport-touring cars that dominated Le Mans—nicknamed “lorries” (trucks) by their vanquished Alsatian opponents over at Bugatti. Bentley engineering, design and sales potential peaked late, just as the Great Depression washed away the culture they inhabited, W.O.’s 8-liter sport-limo the final flourish before a half-century of servitude. Thus under the leadership of a brilliant engineer and leader, Wolfgang Dürheimer, Bentley can legitimately produce limos, big GTs, sport sedans, and thanks to the Le Mans heritage, even pure two-seat sports cars. As SUVs are the modern equivalent of classic-era town cars like the 8-liters of 1930 and early 1931, here too Bentley scores. Bentley’s portfolio can expand into most sectors of the luxury market, the cars never feeling forced or contrived.

GT3R offers a new flavor of Continental, one that will be greatly enjoyed by the 300 people lucky enough to write the check. More importantly, it presages the Speed 6 luxury two-seat hybrid sports car to come, which I suspect will give fits to Aston Martin, Mercedes-AMG and others. So, no, GT3R is not a cynical marketing exercise.

When we interviewed Wolfgang Dürheimer a couple of months ago for a strategy piece, he summed up our exchange with words to warm the heart. “The Bentley Boys were driven by an extraordinary passion for life, always wanting to push further and faster,” Dürheimer said. “They had a limitless desire for speed, luxury and winning. It’s an attitude we have at Bentley today. W.O. Bentley’s famous ambition was ‘to build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class.’ That’s modern Bentley.” With that statement, our appetite grows for the new W12 powering the Bentayga SUV, and better still the Speed 6 two-seat sports car.