Bentley: Continental Gt on 2040-cars

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2020 Bentley Flying Spur spied winter testing in Europe

The current Bentley Continental GT made its debut about a year and a half ago at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The big British coupe was joined about a year later by a drop-top variant, but there's been little word on the four-door model, the Bentley Flying Spur. We saw some spy shots last May of the car testing at the Nurburgring, and today we have a new batch of the Flying Spur doing winter testing in Europe. We don't know when the car might debut, but don't rule out a surprise reveal at next week's Geneva Motor Show. The cars in these photos are nearly uncovered. That said, if you're not paying attention, you may not notice much difference. Bentley has taken the Porsche approach to design, evolving the same basic formula rather than issuing a ground-up redesign. The lighting has all been updated, with larger lenses both front and rear. The smaller secondary headlights have moved further out on the front fenders. The upper and lower grilles, too, are larger, taking up a majority of the front end. The profile is generally unchanged, though some of the lines appear to be a little sharper, giving the Flying Spur a more muscular appearance. Expect the 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 to soldier on. In the Continental, the engine makes 626 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. The Flying Spur should get a similar output. As on the coupe, expect a V8 and plug-in hybrid variant to follow in the next few years. Related Video:

Bentley's next model gets Airline Seat Specification option

Bentley is preparing to add a fifth model to its line-up. The company isn't ready to reveal the car's identity — though we think we know what we're looking at — but it announced that the mysterious vehicle will be available with an option called Airline Seat Specification. If you travel in economy class, there is absolutely nothing glamorous about an airline seat: it's often thinly-padded, cramped, and not nearly as clean as we like to imagine. Bentley's new option takes inspiration from the front of the plane, however, where business class and first-class passengers fly. Buyers who order the Airline Seat Specification option will get a car whose individual rear seats are 22-way power-adjustable, feature what the firm calls an "auto climate sensing system," and benefit from an advanced postural adjustment technology that offers 177 individual pressure changes possible across six zones. Bentley proudly calls this the most advanced seat ever fitted to a car. The company is also embedding lighting elements into the door panels. Called Bentley Diamond Illumination, this system consists of 12 LEDs integrated into the front door panels and 22 LEDs integrated into the rear door panels. They're configured to shine through small holes in the upholstery. The result is shown in the image above, though other designs may be possible. Bentley pointed out that the model it's preparing to unveil will offer no less than 24 billion (yes, billion!) unique possible configurations of trim specification alone. As for the rest of the car, nothing is official yet but we're fairly sure that we're looking at a long-wheelbase version of the Bentayga. We'll have a better idea of what Bentley has in the pipeline when the model makes its debut online on May 10, 2022, at 12:30 p.m British time. Related video:

Bentley Bentayga V8 Design Series embraces the darkness

It is a truism that designers love the color black, and the hue features prominently in the Bentley Bentayga V8 Design Series. Outside, the Design Series comes standard with the Bentayga's optional Blackline package, which includes black trim, black exhaust outlets, and a body-color lower front fascia. The Design Series also gets a special set of seven-spoke Paragon alloy wheels in dark gray. In a trick seen also on — ahem — Rolls-Royce, the wheels feature self-leveling center badges, which means the "B" is never at an incorrect angle. Designers hate that. While the exterior is offered in colors other than black, the interior comes exclusively in black (Bentley's "Beluga"), but with a contrasting accent color — red, orange, white, or blue — that runs across the dash and on the sides of the center console. It is also seen in the seat leather perforations and in the binding of the deep-pile floor mats. Carbon-fiber trim on the dashboard and door panels has a special diamond-weave pattern, while gloss-black center console trim provides still more blackness. A Breitling clock in the dash is not black — it has a mother-of-pearl face. Other included goodies are "Comfort" seats, door sills with an illuminated "Bentley" treadplate, and drilled-alloy pedals. The Design Series is exclusive to the eight-cylinder Bentayga, which is powered by a 542-hp V8. We'd say that buyers of the 12-cylinder model or the Bentayga Hybrid are out of luck but they can probably lean on Bentley's Mulliner in-house customizing operation to approximate something close. But then, if you're going the full Mulliner route, why not get a little more imaginative? Maybe with something like the Bentayga for falconry or this paean to fly fishing? Just be sure to spec those self-leveling wheels — after all, one's B should always be upright.