13 Bentley Continental Gt Speed W12 Twin-turbo Awd 1k Nav Pdc Rear-cam Keyless on 2040-cars

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Watch a Bentley Continental GT Speed hoon around an abandoned Sicilian air base

If your morning caffeine dose isn't quite getting the job done, watching a 12-cylinder Bentley Continental GT Speed drift around the former NATO Comiso Air Station in Sicily may just do the trick. While "Continental Drift" may have nothing to do with plate tectonics in this context, it's highly appropriate that the GT Speed is powered by a W12 producing enough torque to shape the Earth's crust from above. Too bad Land Rover has dibs on "Pangea Green" as a paint finish. Per Bentley, the short was filmed during the recent Global Media Drive for the GT Speed. Bentley converted the abandoned NATO base into a gymkhana-style track. "Abandoned almost 30 years ago and having been slowly reclaimed by nature since, Comiso proved to be the ideal place to create a safe yet challenging environment to demonstrate the performance credentials of the GT Speed," Bentley said in the accompanying announcement.  Comiso is no stranger to ground-based missiles, but the Continental GT Speed is an entirely different breed. Its 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 makes 650 horsepower (up 24 over the standard W12) and 664 pound-feet of torque, dropping the GT Speed's 0-60 mph time to 3.5 seconds on the way to a top speed of 208 mph. 

2018 Bentley Continental Supersports | More exciting than space travel

For the final song on their delightfully buoyant and mordant 1996 album This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, Pacific Northwest indie rock band Modest Mouse penned an even more cynical response to David Bowie's already nihilistic ode to interstellar flight, "Space Oddity" The song imagines the life of a lonely female passenger on a flight to some distant lunar satellite, lost in post-gravitational anomie ("She's the only rocketeer in the whole damn place/They gave her a mirror so she could talk to her face.") Dreading the endless blankness of her voyage as much as the senseless achievement of reaching its destination, the unnamed woman wishes she could just read a dime-store novel and return home. It is titled, poignantly, " Space Travel is Boring." We recently visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA's literal launch pad for the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle. Since there are currently no rockets going up, Space Florida's Shuttle Landing Facility did us the favor and allowed us to use the 3.5-mile-long runway built for the Shuttle — literally, the longest stretch of underutilized, perfectly straight, perfectly paved roadway in the world — for a series of automotive maneuvers. Our vehicle of choice was the $293,300 2018 Bentley Continental Supersports. This was decidedly not boring. The Supersports is an enhanced version of an already extremely potent vehicle. Featuring an upgraded crankshaft, torque converter, and turbochargers for more power and improved power delivery, the Supersports' 6.0-liter W12 engine produces an even 700 horsepower, and 750 lb-ft of torque. That makes this the most powerful and fastest Bentley ever made. Sixty miles per hour is dispatched in 3.4 seconds on the way to a maximum velocity of 209 mph. The largest carbon ceramic brakes of any production car come as standard equipment, as do carbon fiber hood vents, front splitter and rear air diffuser, side trim, and a planed long-board of a rear wing. Handsome 21-inch lightweight forged wheels are also part of the package, though, really, weight savings is almost irrelevant in this vehicle. The Supersports weighs over 2.5 tons, or about as much as one of the tread belt shoes on the diesel/electric crawler used to tug the 70-million-pound Space Shuttle and its boosters out onto Canaveral's runway. We were tugged out onto the runway as well, though in a slightly different fashion.

Bentley Bentayga takes Pikes Peak SUV record

Earlier this spring, we wrote about Bentley's bid to beat the existing Pikes Peak record for sports utility vehicles, with racing driver Rhys Millen behind the wheel of a bright green Bentayga. And this past weekend, they did it, slicing almost two minutes off the earlier record. Having been set by Paul Dallenbach with a Range Rover Sport back in 2013, the old record stood at 12:35.61. The New Zealand-born Millen completed the course in 10:49.9, at an average speed of 66.5 miles per hour. To pass Pikes Peak scrutineering and to keep Millen safe, the near-stock Bentayga had been fitted with a roll cage and racing seats, along with a harness and a fire suppression system; the only performance modification was a production-specification Akrapovic exhaust system. We expect the engine note to have been crowd-pleasing. The #Bentayga has smashed the Production SUV record at #PikesPeak, beating the previous best by nearly two minutes. @RhysMillen took just 10:49.9 to climb 5000 ft over 12.4 miles #BeExtraordinary pic.twitter.com/sEQ80FgwbE — Bentley Motors Comms (@BentleyComms) June 24, 2018 The 5000-foot climb has 156 corners, which the Radium Satin colored, 600-hp Bentayga attacked on stock Pirelli rubber. After his record run, Millen said: "To take a luxury SUV with minimal modifications and be able to drive up this course in under 11 minutes is a huge testament to the performance and level of engineering in the Bentayga." Related Video: Featured Gallery Bentley Bentayga Pikes Peak Image Credit: Bentley Motorsports Bentley Crossover SUV Luxury pikes peak bentley bentayga hill climb