Gadgetory

from its enormous doors bigger and heavier than some cars I've owned - it's great soft dig rump the Continental GT exists for one reason to transport just two people in a manner that says the one on the left has arrived let's drive this 2012 version with the w12 motor and check the tech everywhere you look the Continental prints like it's a hundred and fifty percent scale model of a regular car and the details I love include this window opening when all the glasses down and you go pillarless and these uh turley flush understated taillights now inside this Bentley we happen to be awash in piano black and stern black leather finishes with their signature diamond quilt but this is a bespoke car you can order this thing any way you can imagine we're not going to go there let's go tech finally Bentley's got a new more modern head unit and let me get on my soapbox for a minute I think a lot of the manufacturers of these extremely expensive cars figure well we're going to Bowl them over with the interior the performance the styling but the folks who buy these cars are the same ones who buy the new iPhone the new iPad every iMac a so knows music system they are technology elites you can't be throwing anything but the best tech in front of them with that in mind this is a very good VW derived piece Volkswagen owns Bentley little quirks though you can have either 2d 3d topo or traffic you can't have traffic on 3d for example or traffic on topo but beyond that the quality of it is good especially when you're zoomed in to a certain level it's a hard drive based system now here are media choices am/fm and HD radio are standard on this guy satellite radio of course under the media tab we get the more interesting stuff optical discs here optional with a package brings us a six disc in the glove box as well you also spotted that MDI controller it's a multi device interface we happen to have a pigtail on there for an iOS device we've also got an SD card slot right here for the four of you who do that you've got a sim card slot so you can have a phone sim in the car and look at this welcome to the 80s this is called the privacy phone for your passengers to use they can call and do a booty call while you're driving you don't know it because they're speaking in code heated and cooled seats with a special feature when they're on high cooling they are the loudest seats I've ever heard I got in this car and they were on cooling three and I thought I was dragging something behind me that's a hell of a noise you hear that the shock absorber button brings you this screen to set up your suspension for settings from comfort to sport needless but fun stuff like this you can play with the wing raise it up and down and not just leave it to its own devices that gets old after about a week we have the name audio system na I am it's an English boutique audio manufacturer and that gets us 11 speakers driven by 16 channels not quite sure how that works but anyway it's in there and they use these special drivers speakers that are flecked which they say disperses audio much more naturally and evenly all I can tell you is this like so many high-dollar systems and this one cost like 7 grand optionally it makes CDs sound tremendous satellite radio guest lis in back is the county jail you'll put someone back there unless they've been real bad drinking fighting cussing behind that is one of the biggest trunks in auto making it goes on free yards one choice only on the gearbox in this guy six-speed Automatic drop back for sport mode over into this gate for shifting mode you have column mounted paddles I normally love these because I like my paddles to be in the same place however I Drive down here not up here because I did driver training couple decades ago but there's nothing to reach for shifting I want some little ears that come down now the engine is quite a thing in the Bentley Continental GT it's a w12 that's a Volkswagen thing it's sort of like a v8 with an extra bank of cylinders nested in there it's a brute we're talking about 567 horsepower 516 foot-pounds of torque thanks to that twin turbos like 12 cylinders wasn't enough 0 to 60 is 4.4 seconds that's impressive enough but add in this fact this car weighs 50 100 pounds the last man that moved you weighed less than that the mpg is the downside 12:19 when your grandma's driving probably single digits when you're or try the new engine option in this car the four liter direct injection twin-turbo v8 they uses cylinder deactivation direct injection and an 8-speed automatic to get you much better mpg 1524 while delivering 500 horsepower 487 foot-pounds of torque and 0 to 60 at tick slower at four point six now driving the Continental GT is like going to dinner with dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde in Drive every day driving going back forth to work or whatever it's kind of a bore it's a big old barrage of a thing and feels all 5115 of its pounds but then put it in sport mode or better yet shifting yourself dial in that suspension to a sporting setting and stand on it and this car pulls a Jenny Craig I swear to god it loses 2,000 pounds and it turns in really nicely because I think I forgot to mention its all-wheel drive one thing it doesn't do is get rid of its body lean this car has a lot of body roll but luckily it's got a lot of tire as well and a lot of power to get all four paws crawling you out of trouble now the kind of power this car delivers and if you're really stand on it it's unbelievable is not the most responsive kind of power it's big displacement although it is at 12 that means that the cylinders are a little more responsive than if they were large in 1/8 but there is some turbo lag in there and generally speaking some thinking lag as all those sensors and processors figure out if they really want to do what you just asked them to it's amazing that you can throw a car this big and this heavy through turns this hard and come out with a shiny side up but you're never given a stake in for a sports car okay let's price the Continental GT because I know you like me you've got 200 grand laying around to go spend on a car that's what it costs about 195 something based but 3,000 of that is gas guzzler tax 2600 his destination chart now the options it'll take you seen that style the name audio system is about seven grand I'm already skeptical but I'm definitely gonna skip that option on the check sheet because I'm not going to hear it when the seat coolers are on then there's the $4,100 convenience package now we're talking that's going to get you adaptive cruise control that kind of cool little privacy handset phone thing and the valet key you