Very first Drive Evaluation
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Pushing the Bentley boundaries when again.
A single thing that has always separated Bentley from its former longtime partner Rolls-Royce is its racing heritage. Bentley trots out this factoid from time to time when it wants to go back to the track, as it did at Le Mans from 2001 to 2003 with the Speed 8 and as it is undertaking now with the Continental GT3 in the Blancpain Endurance Series in Europe and the Pirelli World Challenge right here in the States.
Whipping effectively-heeled motorsports fans into a froth over Bentley race automobiles doesn’t serve considerably objective unless you can then give them anything to purchase. So along comes the GT3-R, a limited-edition brand stretcher intended to test the waters for even sportier Bentleys that may possibly come down the chute later.
Priced at $ 339,725, or a lot more than $ 135,000 costlier than a base Continental V-8 S, the 300 copies of the GT3-R that Bentley says it will construct will not be GT3s with license plates. In other words, the GT3-R is not a slammed, rear-wheel-drive racing shell with a sequential transmission, a roll cage, and a rather massive Gatorade bottle. As an alternative, it’s a massaged Continental GT V-8 S that has been horse-whipped to 572 horsepower and 516 lb-ft, increases of 51 and 14. That’s a lot of sauce out of 244 cubic inches. Truly, there’s an overboost function that makes feasible 592 horses and 553 lb-ft for 15 seconds, which is not extended enough to get down the Mulsanne straight but much more than enough to scare the caviar lunch out of your passenger.
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A Bentley with No Wood?
Yes, just one passenger, because to attain its 220-pound weight savings over the regular Conti, the GT3-R goes with no back seats, as an alternative supplying a diamond-pleated parcel shelf to go with your diamond-pleated buckets. This is the 1st Bentley that anybody at the factory could keep in mind with completely no wood (although the Bentley PR group later pointed out that the ISR from a couple of years back also lacked wood). As an alternative, the GT3-R functions carbon trim on the doors and the center and overhead consoles. If you miss that detail, the slashes of grasshopper-green trim pretty scream that you are in for a diverse kind of Bentley experience, despite the truth that the automobile is nonetheless weighty, at a factory-claimed 4840 pounds.
The deep buckets are about as cushy as a stack of drywall, and as soon as you are buckled in, the twin-turbo V-8 alights with a louder, coarser roar through its titanium exhaust than any street-legal Bentley you have previously encountered. New pistons, turbos, and engine calibrations give the throttle an urgency it lacks in the Continental S, which, granted, is deliberately a small squishy. Bentley claims a -to-60-mph time for the R of 3.6 seconds, a realistic quantity as confirmed by our effectively-calibrated keisters. This massive B moves out.
We’re told the W-12 wasn’t employed due to the fact it is a lot heavier, and trimming mass was a GT3-R priority. We’d guess that it also doesn’t lend itself as effortlessly or as cheaply to a energy bump as the Audi-created V-8, which has currently been taken to 560 hp in the RS7. And who knows? Bentley may possibly even drop the W-12 from the Continental in the future and reserve it for sedans like the Flying Spur and the Mulsanne.
Either way, the worked V-8 provides a vigorous if gentlemanly urge to the GT3-R, grumbling potently without becoming aurally abusive. A shorter final-drive ratio (3.50:1 alternatively of 2.85 in the V-8 S) definitely assists hasten the GT3-R’s acceleration. You can shift the 8-speed automatic—which has been tuned for faster changes—with the blocky paddles or simply select the sportiest mode, which holds the vehicle in lower gears and seems to have the suitable ratio cued up when you want it.
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Moves: It Has Them
In the curves, the firmer spring prices and revised shock tuning sharpen the handling, the GT3-R turning into the corner a lot more fiercely and with significantly less roll. A torque-vectoring rear differential also does its component to turn this large freighter like a racing sloop. Although the steering ratio is the same, the R’s synthetic-suede-wrapped wheel feels far better connected and faster, in part because the physique isn’t permitted to sway as significantly. In spite of nevertheless being in a enormous, wide Bentley, we located corner placement straightforward and the grip from the Pirelli 275/40 tires on 21-inch forged wheels to be unbreakable. Ceramic brake discs, which are even larger than a standard Conti’s at a satellite-dish-sized 16.5 inches in diameter up front, quit the vehicle as if it were 1000 pounds lighter.
You can connect corners on your favourite twisty road with a fluidity that drivers of BMW M3s and Audi S4s will locate familiar. No, the GT3-R doesn’t appear as flickable, but it does not flinch in late braking events or trigger you to sweat a sudden decreasing radius. Luxury machines tend to disconnect the driver from the road, but the GT3-R does its very best to restore communication by means of the hardware.
Bentley’s apparent objective of turning its luxury cruiser into a harder-edged corner-seeker has been accomplished—which tends to make the GT3-R a bit of an odd duck. Regardless of the trimming of weight, it is not specially light, and far-quicker machines are available for a lot much less cash (paging the Porsche 911 Turbo). But you can’t frame the vehicle in rational, comparative terms. It is a bone for the Bentley fan base, an increasingly younger crowd that wants efficiency. Will this lead to a new R sub-brand? Let’s see how this vehicle is accepted, we’re told. At least Bentley, as opposed to Rolls, has a history here with its several Red Labels, Green Labels, and Black Labels, as well as its numerous trips to Le Mans more than the decades. With the GT3-R, Bentley is obtaining prepared to push its boundaries again.
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