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Xcar calls Continental GT V8 S the best Bentley yet

It wouldn't be fair to describe the Bentley Continental GT V8 S as taking the standard version of the luxury coupe and turning the driving engagement up to 11. That accolade is reserved for the hardcore, stripped-out GT3-R version. Though, not everyone wants to go quite that far. As Xcar Films presents in a new video, being behind the wheel of the S compared to the standard GT is more like listening to music through a quality set of speakers where everything become a little more crisp and clear. Giving the S that extra little bit are a multitude of improvements like a stiffer suspension, tighter steering, a more aggressive body kit and an extra 21 horsepower from its twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8. However, the real magic is how Bentley mixes all of the tweaks together into a grand tourer that can work with drivers when they want to have a little fun. Plus, Xcar's fantastic cinematography over some rolling British hills on a wet day provides a great backdrop.

Your Bentley interior can literally rock with stone trim

The ultra-luxury car market has been moving in the direction of ever more customization to provide buyers the most unique products possible. The latest move comes from Bentley and its Mulliner division, which has added some special interior trims to the existing line of gloss wood. Now buyers with the means can finish their Bentley interiors in open-pore wood, carbon fiber, aluminum, color-matched paint and even stone. The two most impressive interior trims are the stone and open-pore options. The stone veneers are made from slate and quartzite, and are available in four different colors: Autumn White, Copper, Galaxy, Terra Red or the Galaxy that's shown in the gallery above. In order to keep the stone from adding too much weight, the veneer is only 0.1 mm. It's also finished so that you can feel the texture of the rock. For the open-pore trim, Bentley offers three wood choices: Liquid Amber (made from American Red Gum), Dark Burr and Tamo Ash. Each has a unique grain that can be felt thanks to the 0.1-mm thick matte protective coating, which is a fifth the thickness of the gloss wood coating. The carbon fiber trim is pretty straightforward. It's gloss carbon fiber, though Bentley says the the resin it uses highlights the weave of the carbon. The aluminum is also fairly straightforward, featuring a thee-dimensional texture mirroring the grille of the car. The diamond-brushing is meant to emphasize the dimension to the panels. Interestingly, this option is exclusive to the Bentayga. Choosing painted trim gives owners the most variety in choice, since they can opt for any of Bentley's 88 exterior colors, or have the panels matched to the interior leather. Related Video:

Gliding on the ice at Bentley's fantasy camp

It was just before 2:00 PM when I landed in Helsinki, bleary-eyed and more than slightly disoriented, after a late-night departure from New York and an early-morning connection in Amsterdam. I was staring at the departures board. There was one more flight to go before I could join Bentley for Power on Ice, its annual ice driving experience in the northerly town of Kuusamo, but there was a problem: There were two HEL-KAO flights on the board, both slated to leave at 4:30, and it was impossible to discern which was Bentley's chartered flight to the alpine ski area. Nonplussed and unable to utter a word in Finnish, I approached a gate agent with rudimentary English to see if she knew which flight was mine. "I'm sorry, sir," she said in an Finnish take on the Omaha dialect, "Your plane does not seem to exist." I winced. Of course it didn't. "My" plane was way out on the tarmac, far away from proletariat jumbo jets, accessible only through a gate that the automaker had staffed and commandeered for the afternoon. It was an auspicious start to three days of attending Bentley's exclusive fantasy camp for its affluent super-fans, which purportedly exists to answer the question: What can you give the Bentley fan who already has everything? For drivers more accustomed to making graceful entries and exits in their posh vehicles, several days of power sliding on a private track more than suffices. You need not be a Bentley owner to participate in the program, but an aficionado of the brand with some cash burning a pretty big hole in the pocket. For the better part of a decade, Bentley has decamped to Kuusamo, the town located just south of the Arctic Circle, to prove the British performance bona-fides of its lineup on 19 square miles of frozen Kuusamojarvi lake, as part of the wintertime Power on Ice event. The program satisfies the need of high-end performance enthusiasts who want something different than arriving at another five-star hotel for another weekend of good eating, drinking, and relaxing. Plenty of brands assert that they have a bespoke answer for discerning customers, but Power on Ice is truly different. You need not be a Bentley owner to participate in the program, but an aficionado of the brand with some cash burning a pretty big hole in the pocket.