Bentley Continental GT (2011): first photos of the new Conti

Do not retune your computer monitor. This is the new, second-generation Bentley Continental GT unveiled today. It might look like a gently polished version of the familiar Conti silhouette that’s plagued football grounds and London’s swankier west end districts since 2003, but trust us: the new Bentley Continental GT is a properly new model.

For a start, every body panel and piece of glass in the Mk2 Conti is different. Dirk van Braeckel and his design team in Crewe have taken the familiar Continental design and sharpened it. This car is the same but different. There’s even a new 4.0-litre V8 engine added to the line-up, just in case you doubted change was afoot.

You’ll spot the new Conti from the front most easily: those Mulsanne-inspired speccy-four-eyes headlamps are distinctive, the inner lamps powered by xenon on low beam and LED on high beam; the outer lenses are day running lights and illuminate entirely by diode. The Bentley grille now sits 40mm lower too.

Park an old and a new Continental alongside each other and you’ll be surprised by the diverging side profiles. Like the transition from Mk1 to Mk2 Audi TT, the glasshouse (or DLO, in designerspeak) is 26mm shallower, making for a more ‘slammed’ appearance on the new Continental GT arriving in early 2011.

The door handles are now on the side character line rather than breaking up the sheetmetal too. And see those door mirrors? They’re the same as on a Mulsanne, they are.

Probably very like the last one, which is to say like the Orient Express on speed. The basic engineering architecture is carried over and the car has an identical wheelbase and overall length. However, there are numerous technical upgrades: the track is wider front and rear, new lighter steering knuckles are now hollow and the wheelarches have swollen to accommodate 20in rims as standard, though many will upgrade to newly available 21in wheels.

Drive is now diverted more to the rear with a standard 60:40 split in normal driving, juggled by a Torsen central diff. The ZF six-speed gearbox is claimed to halve shift times using tech pioneered on the Supersports, but ZF’s eight-speeder is coming according to chief engineer Ulrich Eichorn (and we’d point out that enables hybridisation as seen on BMWs and future Jaguar Land Rover products).

Most importantly, the new Conti GT makes greater use of lightweight aluminium throughout. The front wing is now a singleformed aluminium piece; the boot and bonnet are both made from aluminium too. Previously the bootlid and wings were steel – all helping to contribute to a 63kg weight saving.

By Tim Pollard