The Bentley Continental GT has always been the best sports car for football players (as in soccer, not the NFL). It's tall, so you don't look like a try-hard with a Ferrari, plus it weighs as much as a tank, and people seem to respect that. But what about that new McLaren GT? Yeah, it's pretty try-hard still, but it could be the armor-piercing bullet that damages the Bentley Panzer.
Even before watching the drag race put together by AutoTrader, we knew that the McLaren is heavily favored. While both models use 4-liter V8 engines, the Continental GT makes less power and is considerably heavier.
UK specs read as follows: Bentley with 542bhp and 568 lb-ft of torque, and McLaren with 612bhp and 465 lb-ft. However, there are other major factors at play here. For example, the Continental GT comes as standard with permanent AWD. McLaren always makes super-light cars with all the weight of the engine over the back, giving them excellent RWD launches.
However, on the day of the race, it was raining cats and dogs, so the AWD proved to be an invaluable advantage, somehow compensating for a weight disparity of over half a ton. The McLaren GT was supposed to get to 60 mph first according to the specs, but its driver believes the Bentley will almost always be quicker right up to about 100mph.
However, the lighter, more slippery car eventually zooms past its adversary, crushing it over the full quarter-mile race. We think that on a dry day, the gap would be huge.
Even though the GT is mid-engined, McLaren doesn't believe it goes up against Ferraris and Lamborghinis. This is a car for Aston Martin customers, they think, capable of crossing continents in style. It's only about 5% more expensive than the Bentley in this video, at least without options.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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