FIRST DRIVE: 782hp, 738lb ft Bentley Continental GT Speed

The Bentley Continental GT is a car for driving to the mountains, not around the mountains. It's a big, heavy cruiser. It's for motorways, not alpine passes. But around here, all we've got is alpine passes. The Furcombe, the Susten are over there. The Grimsel's around that corner. The Oberalp and the Gothard are that way. So here's what we're going to do. We are going to take the new Conti GT's cruising credentials for granted. And instead, we're just going to see how it handles. Because that's the promise. Bentley has hosed technology at the Conti GT. The burly W12 has gone, replaced by a twin-turbo V8 augmented by an electric motor to produce 771 horsepower. To cope with that, the chassis has been significantly upgraded. Four-wheel steering, twin-chamber dampers, an electronic diff, torque vectoring and more, all to stop the heavy coupe understeering through the nearest guardrail. So far, so good. Haven't ploughed through a guardrail yet. And actually, I don't feel like I'm going to. This is a new, more confident, more dynamic Conti GT. In the old one, I'd have got to a corner like that, and it just wouldn't have wanted to change direction. It would have wanted to plough straight on. But this, much better balance, much more neutral, got better turn-in at the front. This is not an utter transformation. This is still not a massively connected or informative car, but it is enormously capable and far more satisfying. In the old car, you were having to drive around its deficiencies, and it was a bit frustrating. This isn't like that. You're not having to make excuses for its behaviour. It's properly capable. It's a good laugh, actually. This is the Newfoundland Pass, and it's quieter than the others. It's less famous, actually higher than most of them, and still rather staggering to look at. What a place to come and drive a car like this. Body control is really good. Actually, if you back it off into comfort, comfort's where they've really changed it. Sport isn't much stiffer than it was before, but they've used these twin-chamber dampers to really give them more bandwidth at the comfort end of things, and that's been very successful. They've now got this wonderful, cushioning all the time if you have it in comfort. This powertrain is quite the monster as well. It's lost a little bit. If you wanted your Conti GT to feel elegant and effortless, then it's lost some of that smoothness and culture that the old W12 had. But the old W12 was never as enjoyable to drive as the V8. There was too much inertia in it. It took too much to get moving. This is much snappier and more responsive. It's now got monoscroll turbos into the variable vane because they can use the electric to do all the torque fill and low-end boost that it needs. And honestly, you can slow this thing down to, like, 2,000 rpm and below, and it just goes. Look at this. Ready? Go. 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. It's just gone. It's really, really quick. 0-62 in 3.3 seconds, 100 miles an hour in under seven, and a 208-mile-an-hour top end. It's breathtakingly fast. And because it's four-wheel drive, it's not quite as dynamic and adjustable and involving as some others. And actually, coming on and off throttle, because it's got a lot of weight, there's less adjustment to it. But it seems to hold up well under brakes, which is surprising. But then these are on whacking great carbon ceramics on this car. And this cockpit is still a lovely place to be. I mean, it's not to my taste with this open-pore wood and the orange accents, but I have to say, the quality of it is just so good. One of the best things for me is how accurate this steering is just off centre. It always used to be a little bit sloppy, but now you barely have to turn it and you get instant response from it. I genuinely come up here and drive this around and really enjoy it up here. There would be a bit of me that wished I was in a proper sports car, though. Right, I need to pull over and show you why this isn't behaving like previous Conti GTs. It's really not going to take me very long. That end, twin-turbo V8. That end, extra 200 kilos of batteries. That's it. The end. OK, not quite the end. Putting the batteries in the back has, for the first time, given the Conti GT, ideal 50-50 weight distribution. But finding space for them was tricky. The boot is smaller now, albeit still bigger than pretty much every other coupe. Oh, and there's the small matter of the Conti GT weighing 2,459 kilos. But Bentley, more than almost any other brand, can get away with being heavy. It's part of their shtick. They're heavily athletic. Think of it as like watching a decathlete sprint. Still goes well, moves the right way. It's just not quite Usain Bolt. There's been a consistent improvement in how the Conti handles since it first appeared back in 2004. Then it was a nose-heavy Grand Tourer, but over the years it's become more dynamic. Bentley refers to this new hybrid one as its fourth generation, but essentially it's just a good mid-life facelift of the all-new car that came along in 2018. That introduced a more rakish, elegant design that has mostly been left alone for this new car. Instead, the money has been spent underneath, on the hybrid system developed in conjunction with Porsche and the comprehensive chassis upgrades. So let's up the ante and find an even more testing road for it. Oh, that is absolutely uncanny. I've just hit the cobbles. And, yeah, you can hear them in the background, but... I can't feel them. I can barely feel them. There's a fraction more jitteriness through the steering, maybe. But in terms of ride comfort and it throwing me around in here, this is remarkable. I'm going to have to stop and just check there are proper cobbles. Hang on a second. Ah, yeah. Proper cobbles with gaps in between them and all the rest of it. This is giving the Conti GT an extra dimension. Go and see what it's like on a proper, tight and twisty old-fashioned pass. This is the Tremolo. It's also known as the Saint Gothard or just the Gothard. That's more the main road. This is the proper old one that used to drop you up and down a long time ago. I'm not going to be going particularly quick along here, but this thing, it's just undisturbed by all these pitter-patter coming through it. You feel it fractionally through the steering, but you don't feel it particularly during the suspension. Those big wheels are just steamrolling it and the body is holding itself really level. It's lovely. What a road to come and drive. Come and do this. This is excellent. I haven't really talked very much yet about this being a hybrid, and I need to because right now I'm just in electric mode. There's a button down here I can adjust the modes and stuff with. And this is a much more convincing hybrid than the old Bentayga. That had a few flaws, not least its V6 engine, but we'll skate over that. The hybrid system itself didn't have that much range and it wouldn't let the engine recharge the battery. This one does, so you've always got some electric on board, or you can have because you can choose on the modes to charge the battery back up. But it's got a big battery in the first place, nearly 26 kilowatt hours, which means you've got a range of 50 miles. And you've got more power, so it's 190 horsepower rather than the 120-odd that the Bentayga has. And that just means that even with 2,500 kilos of weight, you've got enough performance to get yourself out of corners and stuff in electric-only mode, so it won't instantly fire up the engine. This feels like a very fitting and suitable Bentley powerplant. But, yeah, it's better when the V8 fires up, isn't it? Do that, shall we? So is this now the best-handling super GT? It depends where you draw the line, but the over-caffeinated, hyperactive Ferrari Roma and ruthless Porsche 911 Turbo remain the handling benchmarks, although they're barely GTs, which means the Conti's closest rival, as ever, is an Aston Martin. The DB12 is a sweet handling car, lighter and more engaging than the Bentley, yet still able to lope through distance. But who needs a trad grand tourer these days? There are cars performing that role, but they go by another name, SUVs. People would rather cross continents in an Urus, DBX or Range Rover than a two-door coupe. But with those, you are never going to want to drive them once you get up here. With this, you will. So does the Conti GT's newfound handling balance fundamentally change it? No, it's still not a sports car, but it remains the world's best long-haul grand tourer. Now with added mountain pass ability.