All-new Bentley Continental GT pops up in Singapore, priced from $890k without COE

SINGAPORE — It may have only made it global debut at the ongoing Frankfurt motor show a couple of days ago, but the all-new Bentley Continental GT is already in Singapore.

The car has been flown in for wealthy clients to take an early look, with deliveries here set to begin in in Q2 2018. Pricing starts at $890,000 without options or COE. 

Bentley says the car was entirely engineered in England, specifically at the storied brand’s HQ in Crewe, near the border with Wales.

This is the third-generation of Bentley’s ultra-lux grand tourer, and it continues the original recipe of placing four seats in an opulent cabin, with 12 cylinders and all wheel-drive powering the lot, and wrapping it all in shapely two-door bodywork. The new skin has a larger grille and widely-spaced lights, a theme first previewed in the Bentley EXP 10 Speed 6 Concept car.  

Under the skin lies the VW Group’s new, premium architecture – MSB – as seen in the latest Porsche Panamera, which we’ve already tested in regular and extended-wheelbase forms and found to be very good indeed. 

The new car has a 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12 good for 635 horsepower and 900Nm of peak torque. It’s paired with an eight-speed twin-clutch auto, and fires the Bentley to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds.
 

That’ll be the “classic” spec for cigar-champing sorts. Bentley announced that a plug-in hybrid version will be available, and in our view it’s highly-likely that a twin-turbo 4.0-litre model emerges someday, as well. Both would meet China’s requirements, where there’s a 4.0-litre tax threshold and impending electrification targets for carmakers.

Meanwhile, Bentley says this is the most efficient W12 engine ever, which is a bit like saying that Kim is the smartest Kardashian. For what it’s worth, the Continental GT delivers 12.2L/100km while excreting 270g/km of CO2.

The car’s crisp bodywork is the result of a new panel forming technique taken from the aerospace industry, and the cabin instrumentation has gone fully digital.

You can get a closer look at the car’s details in this launch video from Frankfurt on our Facebook page — skip to the 6m mark for board member Rolf Frech’s technical presentation.

The price of $890,000 without options or a COE, which makes it cheaper than the last Conti GT to land here. Earlier this year, Bentley posted a last hurrah for the second-gen Continental GT in the form of the 700hp Supersports model, which sold in Singapore for $1,150,000 without COE.

The Continental GT will continue to offer a clear value proposition: in its neighbourhood, nothing that offers this much performance and space in one package. In that sense, Crewe’s missile is excellent at finding its target.