2008 Bentley Continental Gtc, Only 5800 Miles, 1-owner, Pristine Car! 07, 09, 10 on 2040-cars

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Best of 2016 | The List

The List hosts Jessi and Patrick spent all of 2016 checking awesome adventures off their automotive bucket list, from escaping a car dangling off a cliff, to taking part in The Great Race road rally. In total, our hosts checked 12 challenges off Autoblog's list of "1,001 car things to do before you die," taking them on travels across the United States and the United Kingdom. Check out some highlights from the season as our hosts drive everything from the super modern to the refreshingly classic, and even take their lives into their own hands all for the sake of completing the ultimate car enthusiast's bucket list. As we look ahead to 2017, be sure to send us your automotive bucket list items. Who knows, maybe your submission will inspire Jessi and Patrick's next escapade. Click here to find more episodes of The List Click here to learn more about our hosts, Jessi and Patrick Aston Martin Bentley Land Rover McLaren The List Videos

The mood at this year’s Paris Motor Show: Quiet

The Paris Motor Show, held every other year in the early fall, typically kicks off the annual cavalcade of automotive conclaves, one that traverses the globe between autumn and spring, introducing projective, conceptual and production-ready vehicle models to the international automotive press, automotive aficionados and a public hungry for news of our increasingly futuristic mobility enterprise. But this year, at the press preview days for the show, the grounds of the Porte de Versailles convention center felt a bit more sparsely populated than usual. This was not simply a subjective sensation, or one influenced by the center's atypically dispersed assemblage of seven discrete buildings, which tends to spread out the cars and the crowds. There were not only fewer new vehicles being premiered in Paris this year, there were fewer manufacturers there to display them. Major mainstream European OEM stalwarts such as Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Nissan and Volkswagen chose to sit out Paris this year, as did boutique manufacturers like Bentley, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. This is not simply based in some antipathy on the part of the German, British and Italian manufacturers toward the French market — though for a variety of historical and societal reasons that market may be more dominated by vehicles produced domestically than others. Rather, it is part of a larger trend in the industry. Last year, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would not be participating in the flagship North American International Auto Show in 2019 — and that it might not return. Other brands including Jaguar/Land Rover, Audi, Porsche, Mazda and nearly every exotic carmaker have also departed the Detroit show. Some of these brands will still appear in the city in which the show is taking place, and host an event offsite, to capitalize on the presence of a large number of reporters in attendance. And even brands that do have a presence at the show have shifted their vehicle introductions to the days before the official press opening in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. In many ways, this makes sense. With an expanding number of automakers, with diversification and niche-ification of models and with wholesale shifts that necessitate the introduction of EV or autonomous sub-brands, there is a growing sense that, with everyone shouting at the same time, no one can be heard.

2013 Bentley Continental GT Speed Convertible

Loses its Head, Keeps its Bespoke Cool
This is the 10th anniversary of the Bentley Continental GT, the 5,500-pound shim that pried open the market for bespoke luxury at $150K. We're into the second generation of the supercoupe that is still - and we think unfairly - derided as a grossly exaggerated Volkswagen, which to us is like saying the Hulk is just Bruce Banner in a tizzy. There are credible grounds for both statements, but in neither case do they accurately convey the chasm between the alpha and the omega.
Nevertheless, checking off the list of updated models brings us to the Bentley Continental GT Speed Convertible, the moderately augmented version of the non-Speed GTC. Back to the notion of unfairness, it's probably just that to say the GT Speed Convertible is only "moderately" changed. It did, after all, take Bentley three years to engineer the changes that separate your 'basic' Bentley from the Speed variant, and although they might be imperceptible, they are numerous.