Bentley Continental V8 flies in to Munich (video)

The Bentley Continental V8 flies across Munich

The Bentley Continental V8 made a dramatic public debut in Munich when it was flown to the SkyLounge for its launch.

The plan to debut the new Bentley Continental V8 (apparently we shouldn’t call it the Continental GT V8, just the Continental V8) in Germany in Munich’s SkyLounge might sound like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. After all, every car maker needs a ‘venue’ for a launch to make an impact, and something called the ‘SkyLounge’ sounds like it might make a good backdrop for Bentley’s newest toy.

But if you know Munich, you’ll know the biggest drawback to that plan is that the Skylounge lives up to its name – it’s a 3002 metre facility on the 14th Floor of the Telekom Center Munich, a glass creation spanning the space between two tower blocks.

It may not be an original idea to fly a new car across a city to its debut – Lamborghini did it with the Reventon in Turin, and Porsche cheated a bit by sticking a Panamera in a lift to get to the 94th floor of the World Financial Centre in Shanghai – but it has an impact.

And it has more of an impact if you get the video camera out and cut together footage of the new Bentley Continental V8 being flown across Munich with some driving footage of the car, and send it out to hungry car news media.

Which is exactly what Bentley has done. So it gives them a bit of publicity for their new ‘affordable’ Continental V8, and us an excuse to run a story.

Klaus Becker of Bentley Munich, who organised the helicopter stunt, said:

A dramatic car got the debut we felt it deserved and we took a little bit of our inspiration from Bentley’s iconic ‘Winged B’ emblem. On a practical level the helicopter was the fastest way to get to the rooftop podium.

The new Bentley Continental V8 – the winged Bentley personified.

(9 photos – click any thumbnail for full gallery)

By Cars UK