‘Mega-monster’: Bentley unveils its near-perfect Continental GT

While the Bentley brand feels as old-school as flogging your peasants with a birch, this Continental GT Speed embraces new tech and borrows brilliant engineering from some other premier carmakers.

The whole thing is so impressive, in fact, that it comes as no surprise to learn that it shares its platform, and engineering genius, with the hybridised Porsche Panamera.

Yes, you would imagine that driving the most powerful Bentley ever made around a private race track carved out of some mountains outside Tokyo would be the most memorable part of a 48-hour trip to Japan. But you’d be wrong.

So please allow me to digress to the fact that my hotel had an onsen (a series of hot spring baths). I’d never visited one before and my post-track-tension muscles needed salving. What you might already know is that Japanese people believe boardies, budgie smugglers and swim suits of all kinds are filthy things that could impurify the spring water and that nudity is thus compulsory.

This put me bang in the middle of a town called Uncomfortable, as did the fact that once you get naked you are supposed to crouch on a stool too small for a kindergartener and have a seated shower (one old bloke did this for at least an hour, and I began to worry that he’d never seen running water before).

You are allowed to carry a small face washer with you, but not for the obvious reason. The locals fold it up and put it on their heads, I know not why, and after an hour in the onsen I felt like there was a lot I didn’t previously know about men in the wild and now wish I didn’t. And yet, conversely, I felt as relaxed as a cat in a sun puddle.

I had also felt supremely comfortable earlier in the new Bentley Continental GT Speed, partly because it features, according to its makers, the “best automotive interior in the world”. I often think Audi has this title, but that brand is a close corporate cousin to Bentley, which is the gap-toothed, elbow-patched and born-rich British relative in the giant Volkswagen family, so it makes sense that its interiors are actually Audi with rich creamy layers on top.

The steering wheel alone – leather at the front, Alcantara at the back – is a thing of beauty, but the best feature has got to be the rotating central screen, which can hide your modern touch display behind some old-school dials for what Bentley calls a “digital detox”.

The outstanding interior of the Bentley Continental GT Speed.

While the Bentley brand feels as old-school as flogging your peasants with a birch, this Continental GT Speed is powered by an impressive new hybrid power plant combining a thumping twin-turbo V8 engine with a powerful e-motor for total outputs of 575kW and 1000Nm. This means you can, in theory, drive it for up to 81km in silent EV mode, at speeds of up to 140km/h, and enter the zero-emissions zones in cities like London with a smug look on your face. What’s properly clever is Bentley knows its owners are too fat, lazy and CO2 producing to bother plugging this car in, so the Continental cleverly uses its engine to recharge the battery while driving, so they never really need to.

Back in the real world, or at least in the fantasy land that is the Magarigawa Club – a billionaires’ playground outside Tokyo where you can eat, sleep, race and repeat – the only thing that matters is how much extra grunt the hybrid system adds to the 4.0-litre V8 (which sounds big, but is actually replacing Bentley’s W12, which has been killed off, forever, despite the brand’s history as the world’s largest producer of 12-cylinder engines).

This vast, plush and surprisingly beautiful machine (it’s designed to look like a “Resting Beast”, but also offers the “Upright Elegance” of a thoroughbred horse, apparently, and an “Endless Bonnet”, which actually does end) is a mega monster of a thing, shifting its 2.5 tonnes of luxury bits to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 335km/h, while still feeling as comfortable as a C-suite office chair.

The GT Speed shifts its 2.5 tonnes of luxury bits to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 335km/h.

Firing this Continental GT Speed around the rolling hills and dangerously long straights of the Magarigawa Club’s crazy track, what is most striking is how unfrightening it feels. There is almost no body roll, the all-wheel-drive system seems to provide an unnatural level of grip and, while you’re never not aware of the weight, it just doesn’t seem to bother the brakes, nor in any way crimp your acceleration.

The whole thing is so impressive, in fact, that it comes as no surprise to learn that it shares its platform, and engineering genius, with the hybridised Porsche Panamera (yes, Porsche is in the VW family too).

I found the warm-up lap they made us do in EV mode, to prove it was possible, almost dangerously boring, but once the switch to Sport mode kicked the engine into life, the big, bad-ass Bentley started to make sense. Perhaps it is the “everyday super car” they like to describe it as. The exhaust even makes Lamborghini-like cracks and bangs at times (yes, Lambo is VW, too). And it’s certainly priced like an Italian stallion, at $581,900.

The Japanese are expected to buy lots of them, and most will be left-hand drive, despite the fact that they drive on the left. Apparently, sitting on the wrong side of the car and being unable to reach car park ticket machines is a “prestige” thing in Japan. And I thought the onsen was weird.

Bentley Continental GT Speed

ENGINE: 4.0-litre V12 plus e-motor (575kW/1000Nm)

FUEL ECONOMY: 10.3 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: 8-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

PRICE: $581,900

RATING: 4.5/5