The Bentley Continental GT Convertible facelift. I was expecting this facelift a bit later but Bentley was more excited than me to revive their best seller car. The Continental GT family was introduced in 2004, and it was a ground-breaking car at the time. The Mercedes CL, Aston Martin DB9 and Ferrari 612 were key players in the luxury GT segment (Later on Maserati GranTurismo joined the game but it is really outdated). The arrival of Continental GT introduced something that never been offered before in this segment: four-wheel drive!
The whole Bentley Continental range was offering a four-wheel drive system as standard and enables the drivers to enjoy their car in any weather condition and experience the excitement of the W12 engine!
As the years passed, Mercedes CL managed to stay boring until S-Coupe, Aston Martin ran out of cash and DB9 became the product with an eternal product life-cycle. Ferrari introduced the FF with an eccentric all-wheel drive and hatchback design. Despite all these exciting variations in the luxury GT segment, Bentley did not introduce a radically new Continental GT or GT Convertible.
The main reason for this is that the Continental family is a great money maker and there are still many people who want to own this car. Therefore, the second generation Continental GT Convertible was not something new. It was sharing the same platform from the first generation and the interior was not changed at all. Of course, there were many improvements; however, it wasn’t like Mercedes-Benz CL vs S-Coupe!
The driving assistance systems were not improved with the second generation Continental GT convertible, there were no gadgets for the driver and the features were more or less the same.
When the Bentley announced the facelift of the second generation Continental family, I was expecting to see some Audi technology for the driving experience such as; pre-crash systems, lane assistance, stop-go radar guided cruise control, night vision and others.
However, it didn’t happen because the platform of the Continental is still the same and it will be the same until the third generation.
Unfortunately, this fuels the competitive power of the Mercedes-Benz S-Coupe (it doesn’t look that bad). Also, the new Aston Martin will be based on Mercedes-Benz technology, so it is another new competitor. Ferrari is Ferrari. The S-Coupe is definitely capturing many existing and potential Continental GT customers; however still a Bentley is a Bentley. There is no way an S-Coupe can be a perfect substitute for the Bentley, but the competition is getting tougher!
I can’t ignore the fact that the Continental GT still looks beautiful.
