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Daily Driver: 2015 Bentley Continental GT Speed

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, featuring impressions from the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2015 Bentley Continental GT Speed coupe, reviewed by Steven Ewing. With a starting price of $235,000, it's not what you'd typically consider a "daily driver," but as we find out, this Bentley is indeed a car you could happily live with every single day. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Hey, guys. This is senior editor Steven Ewing with another Daily Driver video. I'm in a car today that you wouldn't necessarily consider to be a daily driver by the normal logic. I'm driving the $235,000 2015 Bentley Continental GT Speed Coupe. Now, as its name would suggest with the word "speed" in there at the end, this is an incredibly powerful and incredibly quick car. [00:00:30] It's powered by a 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 engine that makes about 626 horsepower and about 606 pound-feet of torque. As you can see, it is a seriously quick car. 0 to 60 is estimated to happen in about four seconds, and this thing will top out at over 205 miles per hour. It's not just the off the line acceleration, [00:01:00] it's how much power is available while you're already at speed. I'm on the freeway right now and just with a light tap of the throttle there's just this massive wave of torque that comes on. It's just smooth, seamless, it's effortless. It's really, really fun. You can really get it going hot into a corner, let it hug it, and it really just grips. It's got a ton of power. [00:01:30] It's a really nice-handling car. A lot of people tend to think of Bentleys as being cars that you're driven in. You picture a Mulsanne pulling up with a chauffeur, but that's not the case with the Continental. In fact, Bentley's done a lot of work in recent years to drive home the point that the Continental is the driver's car. You look at things like the GT V8 S, which is one of my favorite Bentleys they've ever produced, where it's a car that despite its heft and its size and all of that, it's [00:02:00] still pretty involving. The chassis tuning is really good. The steering's pretty good. It's actually a good to drive car. On top of that, it's incredibly quiet in here.

Bentley's SUV will be first of many plug-in hybrids

Bentley is not exactly a company known for its environmental credentials. Sure, it recently cut its water usage down by over a third, and given the relatively small number of vehicles it produces, the British firm's overall impact on the environment may be negligible compared to mass-market rivals. And of course, its affluent customers are hardly likely to feel the pinch of rising fuel costs, so Bentley's idea of engine downsizing has been going from twelve cylinders to eight.
That will all change with the launch of its first SUV, previewed by the controversial EXP 9 F concept and expected to be called Falcon. To hear Auto Express tell it, the luxo-ute is being designed from the get-go to incorporate a plug-in hybrid powertrain, slated to go on sale a year after the conventional version arrives late in 2015 or early 2016. But that's just the tip of the iceberg which Bentley is trying to help keep from melting.
Following the Falcon, other Bentleys are slated to get PHEV systems as well. It'll just take a while. That's because current models like the Continental and Mulsanne were never designed to incorporate PHEV powertrain systems in the first place. So while they may get them in the long run, their integration will likely have to wait until their replacements arrive.

Face-lifted Bentley Bentayga bares it all on Instagram

Bentley's updated Bentayga unofficially made its global debut on Instagram. Leaked images confirm the company's best-selling model receives a subtly redesigned front end, and a handful of new tech features inside. Instagram user Wilco Blok posted the four images. Some look like they were scanned from a marketing brochure, while others were seemingly taken by a spy photographer. The quartet gives us a decent idea of what to expect from the SUV, starting with a new-look front end that gains oval headlights, a wider grille that's more neatly integrated into the rest of the fascia, and a reshaped lower bumper. The nip-and-tuck creates a visual link between the Bentayga and the Continental GT. Photos of its rear end weren't leaked.           View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by WILCO BLOK (@wilcoblok) on Jun 17, 2020 at 2:06am PDT Most of the interior changes seem to be technology-related. Bentley added a fully digital instrument cluster, and a wider touchscreen that displays an updated infotainment system. Above it, the climate control system's vents are now rectangular instead of round. Below it, designers rearranged the buttons on the center stack. Odds are there are other tweaks not shown in the leaked images. Something else that remains to be seen is what the face-lifted Bentayga looks like under the hood. It's currently offered with a 4.0-liter V8 rated at 542 horsepower, a 6.0-liter W12 available with 600 or 626 horses, and a 456-horsepower plug-in hybrid drivetrain built around a 3.0-liter V6. These specifications could look a little bit different when the model breaks cover. Bentley hasn't commented on the images, and it hasn't announced when it will reveal the updated Bentayga yet. However, now the cat is out of the bag, an official introduction will likely take place sooner rather than later. Related Video: