Worth The Wait

MUSCULAR BRITISH LUXURY ON A GRAND SCALE

- Jonny Lieberman

The original press drive for the 2019 Bentley Continental GT was slated for November. In an unusual move, Bentley pushed back the launch of the replacement for its new big coupe by six months. Why? The car wasn’t good enough.

Bentley engineers wanted a home run, not a double. Rightly so, for even in these SUV-crazed times when the Bentayga is Bentley’s best-seller, the Continental GT is the heart, soul, and face of the storied brand. The previous generation of the heavyweight grand tourer is the bestselling Bentley ever, with nearly 70,000 units sold. The new one had better rock.

Fast-forward to the middle of May and the fabulous Kitzbühel Country Club tucked into the Tyrolean Alps. With the Continental GT now properly sorted, Bentley gathered a gaggle of North American motoring scribes to take the sharply tailored brutes on something of a mini grand tour. Our route ascended up into the incomparable Grossglockner High Alpine Road, descended to an airfield in Lienz, dropped into Sauris, Italy, and finally headed back into Austria—where a jet would fly us to Munich, Germany. Beats breaking rocks.

The new Conti rides on the Volkswagen Group’s freshly minted MSB architecture, shared with the second-gen Porsche Panamera. The cynics among you will be quick to point out that the new Bentley is really just a two-door Panamera. They should have called it the 928, right?

Wrong.

Quite wrong, actually. You would have to be familiar with Porsche’s big sedan to notice any shared parts. The wheel-mounted paddle shifters and the lever to adjust the steering wheel are the Continental’s two most noticeable carryovers from the Panamera. Bentley was keen to stress that it’s been involved with MSB since its inception, and the carmaker did a great job of differentiating the Conti from its corporate cousin.