DRIVER'S SEAT
THERE WAS A TIME, NOT SO LONG ago, when the idea of an electrified Bentley Continental would have seemed a little off. Not offensive, exactly. Not impossible. Just slightly out of step with the nature of the thing. After all, the Continental GT has never been some delicate little sports car, engineered by people who worry about lap times above all else. It has always been a grand tourer in the truest sense: big, powerful, beautiful, heavy with intent, and capable of covering huge distances at huge speed while making everyone inside feel insulated from the outside world. So, yes, the arrival of a plug-in hybrid powertrain in the 2027 Bentley Continental
GT S and its open-air sibling, the GTC S, raises a fair question. Does electrification make the Continental more like a Bentley, or less like one? The answer comes pretty quickly. Under the hood is Bentley’s High Performance Hybrid system, pairing a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 with a 188-horsepower electric motor and 25.9- kWh battery pack. Total output lands at 671 horsepower and 686 pound-feet of torque. The coupe reaches 100 km/h in a claimed 3.5 seconds, while the convertible takes 3.7 seconds. Both cars run on to 307 km/h. Serious numbers, for sure. But the Bentley doesn’t feel fast in the frantic way some modern performance machines feel
"The plug-in hybrid system is not a party trick; it’s a supporting structure."
16
Powered by FlippingBook