2006 Bentley Continental Gt on 2040-cars

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2019 Bentley Continental GT: High fashion at its best

The new 2019 Bentley Continental GT has been revealed, and it is a stunner. It shows a healthy influence from the brand's recent show cars, especially the EXP 10 Speed 6. This is a very positive thing. Whereas the exterior of the second-generation car looked exactly like that of the first, the new car sports fresh surfacing that is at once more elegant and more athletic, while also delighting in technical detailing that deepens upon second and third glance. The styling of a six-figure, ultra-luxury Grand Tourer must evolve slowly for a number of reasons. Their wealthy buyers – looking for a prime valet spot at the country club more than at the night club – tend to be a bit more conservative in their tastes than those in the market for a knife-edged exotic. They also prefer their recently purchased six-figure, ultra-luxury Grand Tourer not to be rendered irrelevant in the status game by the introduction of a radically differentiated new model. This is especially true for Bentley and its Continental GT. This model, launched back in 2004, though tracing its roots back much further, brought the company's design out of the anachronistically (if delightfully) baroque and into the aerodynamically imposing modern era. It was the first true 21st century Bentley, decades ahead of the neoclassic design it replaced while faithfully harkening back to cues from the marque's venerable history, especially its long flanking body line, and conspicuous rear haunches. It immediately became Bentley's best seller, a position it has maintained until this year, when it's been outsold slightly by the gauche and indistinct Bentayga SUV. We believe this error will correct once the new GT is available. Much of the success of the design comes from its transference to a platform shared with the new Porsche Panamera. The previous-generation Continentals were built on underpinnings originally created for the VW Phaeton, a configuration that was, at heart, front-drive with all-wheel-drive capabilities, packaging that required engine placement ahead of the front axle. This new stablemate has a rear-wheel-drive bias, allowing for more traditional and gracious grand touring proportions on the surface. It reflects the movement of the engine farther back on the chassis, with a long hood and more hunkered-down and planted rear. We detect luscious shades of 1960s Ferrari Superfast cues in this tapering front-to-rear, side-to-side and along the flanks.

VW may make Bentley a subsidiary of Audi

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen plans to make British luxury carmaker Bentley a subsidiary of its Audi division as it seeks economies of scale among its top-end brands, German trade publication Automobilwoche reported. Bentley, for now overseen by the head of VW's Porsche business, Oliver Blume, will from next year be part of Audi, where VW group Chief Executive Herbert Diess believes it has more potential, Automobilwoche cited company sources as saying. Synergies could include using Audi technology for a new Bentley SUV, it added. Volkswagen, which declined to comment on the report, is reviewing the future of its high-performance brands Lamborghini, Bugatti and Ducati motorcycles as part of broader quest for more economies of scale as it shifts to mass producing electric cars. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters this month that Volkswagen was working on plans to prepare Lamborghini for a stock market listing. Related Video: Audi Bentley Volkswagen

Enhance this football field-sized photo to find the Bentley

"Enhance! Enhance! Enhance!" Zooming in on this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge feels like taking part in a 2000s crime lab cop show, with their seemingly endless capabilities to zoom in a photo to catch a suspect. But it's not a grainy safety camera shot we are looking here, but a composite image stitched together using the same space age technology NASA uses to create panorama shots from Curiosity Rover images. Keep zooming, and a Bentley Mulsanne will appear. Keep zooming, and you can get close enough to see the stitching on the Bentley logo on the tan leather headrest. According to Bentley, the image was created by combining 700 separate photographs, and the image consists of 53 billion pixels, or 53 gigapixels. The starting point is nearly half a mile away, and if you decided to play a prank on whoever runs the nearest inkjet printer, you would produce enough material to fill a football field. Bentley says that the point of the zoomable image is to show just how much they pay attention to detail when crafting these $330,000 luxury cars. The particular car is a Mulsanne Extended Wheelbase finished in Rose Gold over Magnetic duo-tone. The image is viewable in its entirety over at Bentley's Look Closer website created for the occasion. Marketing/Advertising Bentley Luxury bentley mulsanne