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2020 Bentley Continental GT V8 Second Drive Review | The leathery lap of luxury

BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — I came home from Florida, unpacked, and was treated to a snowstorm the day after my vacation. As I sat in the office, watching the white stuff come down harder and harder, Autoblog Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore started asking questions. “Is the Bentley in the basement?” he asked, referring to the $280,000 Continental GT V8 that I was supposed to drive home that evening. Later, “What kind of tires are on the Bentley?” I wasnÂ’t too nervous yet. It was on all-seasons, and was equipped with all-wheel drive. After more hours of blowing snow, he said to me, “If you want to punt on driving the Bentley until the weatherÂ’s better, thatÂ’s fine.” Punt I did, taking the 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road Premium home that night instead. The next day, after the plows, salt trucks and sunshine had done their thing to the roads, I finally got to scratch the Bentley itch that had been nagging me since I had landed in Detroit. I grabbed the weighty key fob, Autoblog Associate Producer Alex Malburg grabbed a camera and mic, and we headed down to the basement together to film the video you see above. Opening the door to the 2020 Bentley Continental GT V8 greets you with a big white “B” illuminated on the ground from the puddle light, surrounded by a yellow circle. I don't recall seeing another multi-colored puddle light before, but IÂ’ll remember this one. We got in the Bentley, fired it up, and gingerly crept out of the basement garage. Before exiting, I made sure to give the car a few revs, but there wasnÂ’t much to hear from inside the cabin. Despite the lack of volume, the 4.0-liter V8 is potent. With 542 horsepower, itÂ’s just shy of the 552 horses of the original Conti GTÂ’s W12, and it out-torques it at 568 pound-feet. Helping to motivate it is a pair of twin-scroll turbochargers. As Alex and I took the Bentley for a cruise down Woodward Avenue, I got to test its straight-line acceleration at stoplight after stoplight. Despite the BentleyÂ’s 5,000-pound curb weight, itÂ’s brisk, but also smooth. ThereÂ’s no noticeable turbo lag as it motivates itself toward extralegal speeds. Bentley claims itÂ’ll do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. There was no way IÂ’d get this thing anywhere near its 198-mph top speed. 2020 Bentley Continental GT V8 First Edition View 24 Photos The big V8Â’s sound doesnÂ’t intrude inside. ThereÂ’s no constant drone, and you only really hear it when you get on the gas.

Bentley designing SUV to reach 200 mph?

The 200 MPH Club was once populated entirely by exotic sports cars. These days it has expanded to include convertibles, sedans and even station wagons. But an SUV? Unthinkable, what with their aerodynamic profile approaching that of a barn door. Bentley, however, is out to change that with its forthcoming new sport ute.
Not only is the British automaker aiming to make its first SUV fully capable off road, it's also engineering it to be one of the fastest on the road as well. According to emerging reports coming in from the UK, Bentley is streamlining the SUV's shape with a lower roofline and reprofiled rear end and fitting it with advanced underbody aerodynamic aids in order to compensate for its over-six-foot width and get it up to the magic 200-mph mark.
Reaching out to Bentley for comment, its communications office wouldn't divulge such performance targets: "The SUV is in the engineering development stage, so unfortunately it's too soon to discuss performance figures," we were told via email. "It will of course have all the power and performance that one would expect from a Bentley!" If the information proves correct, however, at that speed, it would be able to keep pace with the faster members of the Continental family, but leave the Mulsanne flagship sedan (which is already approaching the size of an SUV) and its 185-mph top speed in the dust - not to mention the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S that is quoted at "only" 175 mph.

Odds are on Bentley Mulsanne replacement to be a flagship SUV

Volkswagen Group brand Porsche sells SUVs so that it can afford to pour money into its segment-defining sports cars. For fellow VW Group brand Bentley, that math doesn't work; Porsche sold around 280,000 cars last year, more than 190,000 of them the Cayenne and Macan, compared to Bentley's total sales of 11,006. The English maker, recently recovered from trying times, must therefore be especially choosy about apportioning resources when deciding what to build. When the company looked at the prospects for the Mulsanne, Bentley realized that developing a four-door sedan replacement wouldn't pay off, so designers fashioned the new Flying Spur into a kind of Mulsanne Lite. If a new model from Crewe ascends into the $300K-plus arena, odds are it will be a crossover. In comments to various outlets over the past few weeks, including Top Gear, Car, and Car and Driver, Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark didn't explicitly admit the arrival of a big-money crossover. However, he said almost everything one could say without admitting it. His comments were previewed last year by those of Werner Tietz, the Bentley board member for engineering. On the subject of updating the automaker's lineup, Tietz told Autocar Bentley's goal is to sell to new customers, and for that, "There is some potential when you look at SUVs too, especially around a car larger than the Bentayga if you consider its value to the Chinese and American markets. So, yes, that is one opportunity we are exploring." Five years ago, talk about a Bentayga variant centered on a sleeker coupe style, not something bigger and badder, but much has happened since then. Hallmark explained that the market for mid-six-figure big sedans has dropped to 1,000 sales worldwide, chopped up between the Mulsanne and Rolls-Royce Phantom. Roughly 90% of Mulsanne sales are to under-40s in China and over-60s in the U.S. While "it's a great business ... it's a shrinking business" because aging Mulsanne buyers in the U.S. don't want to drop another half million dollars on a daily driver, opting for a Flying Spur or Bentayga instead. As for the Chinese market, the CEO confessed to Car, "[If] we did a — not to give you the answer — if we did a longer wheelbase Bentayga, every single one of those Mulsanne customers in ChinaÂ… would take that instead."  The Bentayga soaks up almost half of Bentley sales.