What's all this about?
A very special Bentley Continental is celebrating quite a big birthday. This year marks seven decades since the original R-Type Continental was launched, instantly becoming the fastest four-seat production car in the world. Now, Bentley is commemorating the anniversary with a new one-off version of the current Continental GT, taking inspiration from the R-Type that lives at Bentley’s headquarters in Crewe.
How so?
The new one-off car has been created using Mulliner’s Personal Commissioning Guide, taking features of ‘JAS 949’, an R-Type that lives at the company’s factory in Cheshire. Like ‘Jas’, the new car features Old English White paint and chrome bumper trim, as well as polished black wheels. However, the 22-inch rims of the modern car are somewhat larger than the 16-inch items fitted to the original.
What about the inside?
The new Azure’s interior has been inspired by ‘Jas’, too, with ‘Cricket Ball’ red leather lining the Continental GT’s cabin. That’s complemented by some Beluga piping and open-pore Burr Walnut veneer that uses just three layers of ultra-thin laquer, totalling just 0.1mm in thickness. That’s in contrast to the usual Bentley wood, which has a 0.5mm high-gloss laquer.
And Bentley has also applied some other JAS 949-inspired touches, including some cross-banding with Australian straight-grain veneer and a rich gold overlay, both of which reference the 1953 car’s interior. What’s more, a silhouette of the R-Type Continental can be seen on the fascia veneer and the interior treadplates.
Why not?
Pretty much. While Bentley might have given this particular Continental GT some heritage aesthetics, the underpinnings are thoroughly modern. The car gets the ‘standard’ 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine seen in other Continental GTs, producing 550hp. That’s quite the difference from the 1953 car, which squeezed just 155hp from its 4.5-litre straight-six engine.
As a result, where ‘Jas’ has a 0-62mph time of 13.6 seconds and a top speed of 115mph, the car that pays homage to it is considerably faster. It takes just four seconds to get from a standstill to 62mph, and flat out it’ll travel at 198mph.
And it isn’t just the engine that’s modern. Bentley has retained the standard car’s adaptive cruise control, lane assist and Bentley Safeguard – a radar and camera system designed to detect other traffic and avoid collisions. A head-up display has also been included alongside a night vision system that uses infra-red cameras to identify potential obstacles that are outside the reach of the headlight beams.
However, Bentley says some of the R-Type Continental’s heritage was already alive and kicking in the existing Continental GT Azure. The comfort-orientated specification of the Azure models, with Dynamic Ride suspension that electronically adjusts the anti-roll bars to maximise passenger comfort, was designed to recreate the R-Type’s ‘magic carpet ride’.
How much will it set me back?
Sadly, you can’t buy this car – at least not officially. Instead, it’s going to be used by Bentley for publicity. However, with Bentley’s Mulliner scheme giving customers the option of creating almost anything they want, it’s probably possible to recreate it for yourself. Admittedly, that probably means spending the best part of £300,000, or possibly even more, but what a way to spend it.
Michael Turnbull - 30 Jan 2023
