BENTLEY Continental GTC V8 Review

We’re out in the desert and we could swear that some crazy locals have just finished a rain-making sun-making ritual, as the heat outside is unbearable. We’re not exactly light on the throttle either, with sand flying everywhere, but the car barely lets us know about these harsh conditions. By the way, we don't know too many other convertibles that can follow a crossover off the road.

The roof acts like a bodyguard who sits in front of your property and stops anybody from coming in. It does pick one or two representatives of the elements and allows a bit of them to come in, just so you know that you’re in a convertible, but that’s about it.

In its quest to provide refinement, the cloth top is aided by redesigned glass, underbody protection and special wheel arch liners. They even re-engineered the rubber seals for crying out loud!

Out here on the sand is where you can feel the benefits of the re-calibrated all-wheel drive system, which now uses a slightly rear-biased 40:60 power delivery instead of the old model’s 50:50 split. With the electronics off, the car stays on track with a lot of confidence but, if you insist, it’s easy to slide it around.

The rear end steps out with an impressive linearity and it’s easy to get it back in. Oh and that V8 up front sounds about one hundred times better than its W12 big brother. Sure, those figure-eight tailpipes are still a bit silly, as only the inner pipes are functional, but the audio quality is exquisite. Right now, we’re a bit high on the deep, metallic exhaust voice and we really want to kill the person that configured out test car - why wouldn’t you add the optional sport exhaust?

We head back to the road in order to test Bentley’s claim that the Continental GTC’s body is the stiffest of any open-top car in the world. Alas, the only tools we have with us are those embedded into our bodies. However, we can tell you that, even when you push the car past the way in which a typical buyer would drive it, you won’t feel anything that would make you regret you didn’t choose the coupe.

The thing still understeers when the electronics are on when you push it too far, but the tendency is less pronounced than in the Continental GT W12.

This car makes you feel so good that we’ve been driving around for hours with no target at all. Now that we’ve checked the odometer, we can’t believe how much we’ve strayed from the original course. It is possible that we’ve never been so far away from home. Yep, the 2013 Bentley Continental GTC is an excellent way of eating up mile after mile, even when the roads are not smooth anymore.

The eight-speed transmission makes the six-speed one in the W12, also a ZF unit, feel a bit unrefined. This one doesn’t like to shift gears ultra-fast either, not even when you’re flat out, but it sure does know what smoothness means.

The gearbox exploits that V8 in front of us like a success-hungry manager. Speaking of this, all they brag about is that the powertrain offers a 40 percent boost in efficiency compared to the W12 of the pre-revamp model. They tell us that the unit keeps its twin turbos in between the cylinder banks, that its alternator charges the battery when you’re off the gas and that the engine can even morph into a V4.

Yes, the unit shuts down four of its cylinders when, again, you are light on the throttle. Bentley’s development cars used a light in the dash to tell you when the motor halved itself, but it seems that somebody told the company that customers wouldn’t like this, so the idea has been shelved.

However, you can use the instant fuel efficiency display to know when you’re running on four. Apart from this factor, there’s no change in the car’s refined behavior that tells gives away the change. It seems that the electronic brain that handless the process, a 32-bit tri-core microprocessor that can juggle with 180 million instructions per second, really knows what it’s doing.

Out on the road, the engine does reward you in terms of fuel efficiency compared to the Continental GT W12, but only when you’re driving with this in mind. Use the throttle with no shame and the efficiency difference between the two will seem like a bit of a joke.

Nevertheless, the V8 engine gives a more playful vibe to the Continental. The weight loss when compared to the W12 is not all that important, as we’re talking more about of a change in the weight distribution, but the unit is simply set up in a way that makes its resources easier to exploit.