The Bentley Continental Supersports is the fastest car Bentley makes.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
OK, we are going to get something out of the way from the beginning. The 2010 Bentley Continental Supersports may be the most extreme example of sport luxury available today, putting mere BMWs to shame, but its navigation system is terrible. The maps are very low resolution and, stored on a DVD, are slow to refresh and calculate routes. This navigation system lacks all but the most basic features, with no external data feeds or text to speech. It really doesn't belong in this car.
Let that rest as our main criticism so we can get to the good stuff, which is just about everything else.
Bentley has offered several variations of its Continental coupe since its introduction in 2003, but the Supersports model exhibits the purest level of performance. Bentley tweaked the already massive engine for more power, fitted wheels with big carbon ceramic brakes, and shed 243 pounds of weight, most notably by removing the rear seat.
And you really don't want a rear seat in this car, as you would resent any passengers back there for being a drag on performance, while they would unfriend you on Facebook for being relegated to such cramped quarters.
With its coupe design, the Bentley Continental Supersports cuts a nice profile.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)We were actually a little surprised at the manageable size of this car, making it easy to maneuver through parking garages and dense urban streets. Despite its smallish size, the body is a head-turner, with external lighting nicely molded into the body and the signature wire Bentley grille. The glossy black 20-inch wheels added to this car's unique look.
Of course, the engine also announces the Continental Supersports arrival with a throaty roar. When we pushed the start button, the engine's 12 cylinders began to pump, air was forced into the manifold from twin turbos, and 6 liters of displacement hosted precisely timed explosions that turned the driveshaft with 621 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque.
This kind of power means you can lightly tap the gas pedal and find yourself far ahead of the pack of traffic sitting back there at the light, the drivers just putting their cell phones down so they can get back to the business of driving. Put the gas down a little harder and you push up to freeway speeds, the car showing very little effort. Introduce the pedal to the floor and you've begun a career in amateur rocketry.
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Bentley teases a new car today, the Grand Bentley, set to debut this summer. Details are few, with a short video showing the bonnet and ornament. But judging from the name, which we assume isn't the actual model designation, and the visuals, it looks like Bentley will encroach on Rolls-Royce territory. Both brands sit at the top of British automotive luxury (even if both are owned by German companies), but Bentley has focused on speed where Rolls-Royce embodies stately elegance. Cars from Bentley, such as the Continental and Flying Spur, show sporting cues in their body work, with an aerodynamic curve from hood to grille, but the Grand Bentley hood shows a sharper drop-off, suggesting a more prominent grille. All we can really surmise is that it will get the Naim audio system Bentley began offering last year.
The summer debut is interesting, as it coincides with the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance celebration of Bentley's 90th anniversary. Could Pebble Beach be the setting for the Grand Bentley's unveiling?
Rolls-Royce cars now sport Lexicon sound systems.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)I went to the New York International Auto Show to listen. Weird yes, but I'm the audio guy, and nowadays high-end cars all have high-end audio systems. These cars go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I was hoping to hear some decent sound. That didn't happen.
Naim's car audio system for Bentley didn't wow us.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)The nice folks at the Bentley Motors display put me in a spectacular Flying Spur Speed ($252,000). The car has a 6-liter W-12 engine with twin turbochargers, 6-speed automatic transmission, and a claimed top speed of 200 mph. The interior was lavish beyond belief, with truly gorgeous wood and leather that puts your average Mercedes to shame. Rock stars and sports heroes know how to live!
The sound? I'm sure the engine sounds fabulous, but they wouldn't allow me the honor of blipping the throttle. Ah, there was a Naim audio system in the car, and I'm a fan of Nain's home gear, but the Bentley's sound system was nothing to get jazzed about.
The $6,900 Naim audio system sports 15 speakers, including dual subwoofers. Just don't kid yourself, it's not remotely on par with a credible home system. I thought the in-dash display was sort of tacky. Naim would never put such a thing in its home systems.
The Mini Cooper sound system was one of the best per dollar, that's for sure.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Next, Rolls-Royce cars, like this awesome Phantom Coupe pictured at the top of this blog ($437,000), now have Lexicon audio systems. Too bad I didn't get to hear it. (Maybe the Bentley guys told them about me, just kidding.)
The Mini Cooper people were a lot friendlier, so I checked out the sound in their 10 speaker MINI Hi-Fi Sound System. Considering it adds just $500 to the car's bottom line, it was pretty good.
... Read moreOK. Maybe not everything in today's show is super cute, but it gives the ladies the chance to speak in exaggerated falsettos. Jason, on the other hand, balances all the cute with an unintentionally awkward joke about one of the newest segments. Oh, you'll see.
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EPISODE 127 |
Candy Comfort Earphones are comfy and kitschy
PBS Sprout makes iPhone apps for preschoolers
Yuruppy, a virtual-pet petting gizmo
Australian IT expert invents the shoe phone
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Two icons of British luxury (owned by German companies), Bentley and Rolls-Royce, showed off new thinking at the Geneva auto show this week in the form of two new concept vehicles.
Bentley, sensing that it is now fashionable to go green, attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by refining its Continental model into the Continental Supersports, at the same time coming up with the most powerful Bentley yet. Rolls-Royce, in its quest for a new model in 2010, comes out with the 200EX, a car that, while exhibiting many features of the Phantom, is much smaller.
Bentley released this teaser photo of a mystery car to debut at Geneva.
(Credit: Bentley)For a superhigh-end automaker with a long history, Bentley keeps itself busy. The company launched the Brooklands coupe in 2007, and last year tweaked its Continental GT, appending the word Speed to the model name. Now Bentley teases us with tidbits about an extreme Bentley due to be launched at the 2009 Geneva auto show.
The Continental GT Speed has similar features to Bentley's mystery car.
(Credit: Bentley)Bentley bills this mystery car as its fastest ever, then adds an environmental spin by noting it can run on biofuels. OK, a flex-fuel vehicle isn't exactly the most innovative technology, but Bentley has to do something to show it's responding to upcoming EU regulations on CO2 emissions.
From our examination of the teaser photos, the new Bentley bears a resemblance to the existing Continental GT Speed model. That car has a six-liter engine producing 600 horsepower, with city mileage just above the single digits. But it can get to 60 mph in just 4.3 seconds. The new model is going to have to beat that time to justify Bentley's claims, or at least beat the GT Speed's top speed of 202 mph.
We caught this profile picture from a video on Bentley's Web site.
(Credit: Bentley)The Speed version of Bentley's Flying Spur uses twin turbochargers to pump the horsepower up to 600, getting it to 60 miles per hour in about 4.5 seconds. This is the first car we've seen with the Naim audio system, a super high quality stereo with 15 speakers and an output of 1,100 watts.
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(Credit:
T3 Gadget Website)
In the past, we've seen laptops named after high-end sports car manufacturers, such as Ferrari and Lamborghini, but what about the luxury car enthusiast? Well, the wait is now over: Ego has announced the Bentley laptop. In keeping with the tradition of the hallowed British brand, the laptop features a hand-stitched leather lid cover and a curved metal case painted the same colors as the car. When closed, the laptop can be carried by its handle, which is also reminiscent of the door handle of the automobile.
Otherwise, you're getting a pretty standard laptop, featuring Windows Vista 64-bit and a 160GB hard drive. It costs a whopping $20,000--but considering the cost of your average Bentley, we guess that's something of a bargain. The Bentley laptop should be available later this summer (in the U.K., at least). So you still have time to take out a second mortgage on your home and be the talk of the town.
The stuff of calendars and posters, exotics are cars you will rarely see in real life. Lucky indeed is the individual who gets to see a Bentley Continental GT Speed or a Spyker C8 Aileron drive by on the street. We've gone through our auto show photographs to select rare new production cars.
Click here for photos of exotic cars from recent auto shows.
The Bentley Brooklands gets an 11-speaker Naim audio system.
(Credit: Bentley Motors)We have Lincoln and THX, Acura and ELS, Lexus and Mark Levinson, and now, Bentley and Naim. Even automakers in the stratosphere of luxury brands feel the need to partner with an established audio company. Naim, a name you probably haven't heard if you aren't a hard-core audiophile, is a British manufacturer of very high-end handmade stereo equipment. Bentley's press release claims this system is the "world's best", but we would like to be the judge of that. All we need is for Bentley to send us a car.
To design the systems, Naim ran acoustic tests of each Bentley model, coming up with unique speaker configurations for each. The Bentley Continental models get 15 speakers, while the Arnage, Azure, and Brooklands get 11 speakers each. That falls short of the 19 speakers in the Lexus LS 600h, if you want to compare numbers. The Naim speakers include 25mm tweeters, 80mm and 130mm mids, and 200mm twin subwoofers.
The Naim amplifier pumps out 1,100 watts.
(Credit: Bentley Motors)Although Lexus might use more speakers, Bentley gets honors for the most powerful amp built into a production car. The 1,100-watt Naim amp uses a six layer double-sided circuit board to allow for a compact design, necessary for any in-car components. Naim also claims a next-generation digital signal processor (DSP), whatever next generation might mean in this context. But some of its specifications are very interesting. The DSP adjusts the equalizer levels for each 1 kilometer per hour change in speed. And on the convertibles, it adjusts the equalizer depending on whether the top is down or up. Finally, you can choose from eight DSP modes, from the default "Audiophile" setting to one specifically designed for digital media, such as MP3s.
