2014 Bentley Mulsanne 4dr Sdn on 2040-cars

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2019 Bentley Continental GT gets stunning new looks but keeps its W12 engine

The Continental GT is an incredibly important model for Bentley, having kicked off the British luxury brand's current resurgence. To wit, in 2003, the year the Continental GT was introduced, Bentley sold around a thousand vehicles. Just a decade later, Bentley was selling 10 times that many cars. You can be sure that the automaker doesn't want that explosive growth to slow down, and the new 2019 Continental GT you see here looks certain to keep customers flowing into Bentley dealerships for the foreseeable future. If you were expecting lots of technology in this new Continental, you'll find it front and center in the cockpit. There's a fully digital dash that mimics conventional gauges on either side of a configurable screen, but the real showstopper is the 12.3-inch Rotating Display. When the car is turned off, the infotainment screen spins to hide behind a wooden veneer – just a small part of the 107 square feet of wood inside – but that's not its only trick. In addition to the LCD screen, there's a third mode festooned with a temperature gauge, compass, and chronometer. The rest of the cabin is suitably opulent. There's diamond-stitched leather, a watch-like machined finish called Cotes de Geneve, diamond knurling, and bronze inserts in between the primary controls. 20-way power adjustable seats are heated, cooled, and massaging, and in-seat Active Bass Transducers are optional. A 6.0-liter W12 engine sends 626 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission. The run to 60 takes just 3.6 seconds, and the top speed is listed at 207 miles per hour. If you were expecting some sort of electrification, you'll have to look elsewhere. A 48-volt electronics system with actuators to help keep the big coupe planted during corners is borrowed from corporate cousins Audi, as do LED Matrix headlights. We'll see the 2019 Continental GT in person at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Pricing has yet to be announced, but we'd expect it to be slightly higher than the $200,000 asking price of the current model. Featured Gallery 2019 Bentley Continental GT View 28 Photos Frankfurt Motor Show Bentley Coupe Luxury Performance

Odds are on Bentley Mulsanne replacement to be a flagship SUV

Volkswagen Group brand Porsche sells SUVs so that it can afford to pour money into its segment-defining sports cars. For fellow VW Group brand Bentley, that math doesn't work; Porsche sold around 280,000 cars last year, more than 190,000 of them the Cayenne and Macan, compared to Bentley's total sales of 11,006. The English maker, recently recovered from trying times, must therefore be especially choosy about apportioning resources when deciding what to build. When the company looked at the prospects for the Mulsanne, Bentley realized that developing a four-door sedan replacement wouldn't pay off, so designers fashioned the new Flying Spur into a kind of Mulsanne Lite. If a new model from Crewe ascends into the $300K-plus arena, odds are it will be a crossover. In comments to various outlets over the past few weeks, including Top Gear, Car, and Car and Driver, Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark didn't explicitly admit the arrival of a big-money crossover. However, he said almost everything one could say without admitting it. His comments were previewed last year by those of Werner Tietz, the Bentley board member for engineering. On the subject of updating the automaker's lineup, Tietz told Autocar Bentley's goal is to sell to new customers, and for that, "There is some potential when you look at SUVs too, especially around a car larger than the Bentayga if you consider its value to the Chinese and American markets. So, yes, that is one opportunity we are exploring." Five years ago, talk about a Bentayga variant centered on a sleeker coupe style, not something bigger and badder, but much has happened since then. Hallmark explained that the market for mid-six-figure big sedans has dropped to 1,000 sales worldwide, chopped up between the Mulsanne and Rolls-Royce Phantom. Roughly 90% of Mulsanne sales are to under-40s in China and over-60s in the U.S. While "it's a great business ... it's a shrinking business" because aging Mulsanne buyers in the U.S. don't want to drop another half million dollars on a daily driver, opting for a Flying Spur or Bentayga instead. As for the Chinese market, the CEO confessed to Car, "[If] we did a — not to give you the answer — if we did a longer wheelbase Bentayga, every single one of those Mulsanne customers in ChinaÂ… would take that instead."  The Bentayga soaks up almost half of Bentley sales.

249 reasons you want to go to Goodwood Revival

At its most basic, Goodwood Revival is a long weekend worth of car races featuring cars made before 1970. There are lots of those, though, including some pretty great ones all over the world. But nothing is like Goodwood Revival because it's so much more than "just" vintage car racing.  First, you have to look the part. Attendees are strongly encouraged to dress in period clothing from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, with a strict dress code enforced should you want to enter the paddock. The goal is to create a more authentic atmosphere to match the cars and the meticulously restored and recreated paddocks, grandstands and other facilities of the reborn Goodwood circuit. Now, the dress code was relaxed this year since the Saturday was literally the hottest Sept. 9 on record in that part of England, and the organizers didn't want people dropping dead because they needed to wear an ascot. Some people definitely took the "relaxed" bit too far, but there was still plenty of atmosphere maintained. It really does make a big difference, as those "relaxed" individuals were often akin to seeing a Starbucks cup in a scene from "Game of Thrones."  You can see what I came up with below along with former Autoblog editor Reese Counts and various other Goodwood attendees. Second, there's the parking lot. But I'll let this entire separate post detail that. Third, there's the enormous carnival-like area featuring vintage-looking rides and various boutiques. Both of those are on the outside portion of the track, and honestly, you could easily just spend your entire day in the parking lot and carnival/shopping area without even crossing over into the circuit area. There you'll find more shops, food and drink opportunities, plus obviously, race car paddocks and the track itself.  Fourth, there are airplanes! I heard there are fewer than in the past, but they're there and they're cool. The Goodwood circuit started out life as the perimeter road around the World War II airfield RAF Westhampnett.  Fifth, with all of the above, Goodwood Revival really is fun for the whole family. It isn't just a bunch of old guys sitting around in lawn chairs. There are plenty of women and adorably dressed children, including babies in vintage prams. It's also not an event that's exclusively for the uber rich, even if they are certainly in full force given who has the sort of money needed to go vintage racing.