|
When it comes to cars I have many favourites. But when I round them down only one can come top and that car is the Bentley Continental GT Mulliner.
With a W-12 engine, a 6-speed semi-automatic gearbox and a top speed of 198mph, the Continental GT has truly earned its place at the top of my list. Last year it sold 1,753 cars at £120,000 plus extras - a phenomenal success for parent company Volkswagen.
The thing I love about this car is that it has a cool sporty design. Usually I don’t like large radiator grills but the one on the Bentley Continental GT Mulliner gives it character and style.
PERFORMANCE FILE
- The Continental GT does a quarter of a mile in 13.4 seconds at 106 mph
- It does 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds
- It does 0 to 100 in 21.2 seconds
- The horsepower is 552 bhp at 6100 rpm (that’s a pretty powerful engine, I think you’d agree!)
FACT FILE: BENTLEY
Bentley Motors was founded by Walter Owen Bentley (1888-1971). The company was located at Cricklewood in North West London. It become famous  by winning the Le Mans 24-hour Race four times in a row between 1927 and 1930. But the stock market crash of 1929 destroyed deman for the company’s expensive products and it was sold to Rolls-Royce in 1931. The most notable car in the Rolls-Royce period was probably the Bentley Continental, which appeared in various forms from 1952 to 1965, and again in 1992, with production ending in 2003.
In 1998, Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors was purchased from Vickers (its owner since 1980) by Volkswagen for £430 million, after bidding against BMW. BMW had recently started supplying components for the new range of cars, notably V8 engines for the Bentley Arnage and V12 engines for the Rolls-Royce SilverSeraph. The Rolls-Royce name was not included in VW's purchase; it was instead licensed to BMW (for £40 million) by the Rolls-Royce aero engine company. BMW and VW came to an agreement whereby VW would manufacture both Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars until the end of 2002, whereupon the right to build Rolls-Royce cars would be BMW's alone. During this period, Volkswagen reduced its reliance on BMW as a supplier: as of 2003, BMW engines are not used in Bentley cars.
In 2003 the company introduced the Continental GT, a large luxury coupe. The car is powered by a version of VW's W-12 engine. Demand has been so great that the factory at Crewe, Cheshire, has been unable to satisfy demand despite producing 4,500 vehicles a year and there is a waiting list of over a year for new vehicles to be delivered. Consequently there are proposals to produce the new model Flying Spur, a four-door version of the Continental GT Dresden, a city in the southeastern part of Germany on the Elbe River; it was almost totally destroyed by British air raids in 1945. Dresden in the same factory where the VW Phateon luxury car is made.
|
