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10-22-2014, 12:02 PM

Space

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Join Date: Jul 2008

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>You can Lease it for $4,100 a month > 0 to 60 in 3.6 Sec<

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2015 Bentley Continental GT3-R

Pushing the Bentley boundaries once again.

OCTOBER 2014

BY AARON ROBINSON

One thing that has always separated Bentley from its former longtime partner Rolls-Royce is its racing heritage. Bentley trots out this factoid from time to time when it wants to go back to the track, as it did at Le Mans from 2001 to 2003with the Speed 8 and as it is doing now with the Continental GT3 in the Blancpain Endurance Series in Europe and the Pirelli World Challenge here in the States.
Whipping well-heeled motorsports fans into a froth over Bentley race cars doesn’t serve much purpose unless you can then give them something to buy. So along comes the GT3-R, a limited-edition brand stretcher intended to test the waters for even sportier Bentleys that may come down the chute later.
Priced at $339,725, or more than $135,000 costlier than a base Continental V-8 S, the 300 copies of the GT3-R that Bentley says it will build will not be GT3s with license plates. In other words, the GT3-R is not a slammed, rear-wheel-drive racing shell with a sequential transmission, a roll cage, and a rather large Gatorade bottle. Instead, it’s a massaged Continental GT V-8 S that has been horse-whipped to 572 horsepower and 516 lb-ft, increases of 51 and 14. That’s a lot of sauce out of 244 cubic inches. Actually, there’s an overboost function that makes possible 592 horses and 553 lb-ft for 15 seconds, which is not long enough to get down the Mulsanne straight but more than sufficient to scare the caviar lunch out of your passenger.

A BENTLEY WITH NO WOOD?

Yes, just one passenger, because to achieve its 220-pound weight savings over the regular Conti, the GT3-R goes without back seats, instead offering a diamond-pleated parcel shelf to go with your diamond-pleated buckets. This is the first Bentley that anyone at the factory could remember with absolutely no wood (although the Bentley PR team later pointed out that the ISR from a few years back also lacked wood). Instead, the GT3-R features carbon trim on the doors and the center and overhead consoles. If you miss that detail, the slashes of grasshopper-green trim fairly scream that you’re in for a different kind of Bentley experience, despite the fact that the car is still weighty, at a factory-claimed 4840 pounds.
The deep buckets are about as cushy as a stack of drywall, and once you’re buckled in, the twin-turbo V-8 alights with a louder, coarser roar through its titanium exhaust than any street-legal Bentley you’ve previously encountered. New pistons, turbos, and engine calibrations give the throttle an urgency it lacks in the Continental S, which, granted, is deliberately a little squishy. Bentley claims a 0-to-60-mph time for the R of 3.6 seconds, a realistic number as confirmed by our well-calibrated keisters. This big B moves out.
We’re told the W-12 wasn’t used because it’s a lot heavier, and trimming mass was a GT3-R priority. We’d guess that it also doesn’t lend itself as easily or as cheaply to a power bump as the Audi-developed V-8, which has already been taken to 560 hp in the RS7. And who knows? Bentley may even drop the W-12 from the Continental in the future and reserve it for sedans like the Flying Spur and the Mulsanne.
Either way, the worked V-8 provides a vigorous if gentlemanly urge to the GT3-R, grumbling potently without being aurally abusive. A shorter final-drive ratio (3.50:1 instead of 2.85 in the V-8 S) certainly helps hasten the GT3-R’s acceleration. You can shift the eight-speed automatic—which has been tuned for faster changes—with the blocky paddles or simply select the sportiest mode, which holds the car in lower gears and seems to have the proper ratio cued up when you want it.

MOVES: IT HAS THEM

In the curves, the firmer spring rates and revised shock tuning sharpen the handling, the GT3-R turning into the corner more fiercely and with less roll. A torque-vectoring rear differential also does its part to turn this big freighter like a racing sloop. Although the steering ratio is the same, the R’s synthetic-suede-wrapped wheel feels better connected and faster, in part because the body isn’t allowed to sway as much. Despite still being in a massive, wide Bentley, we found corner placement easy and the grip from the Pirelli 275/40 tires on 21-inch forged wheels to be unbreakable. Ceramic brake discs, which are even larger than a regular Conti’s at a satellite-dish-sized 16.5 inches in diameter up front, stop the car as if it were 1000 pounds lighter.
You can connect corners on your favorite twisty road with a fluidity that drivers of BMW M3s and Audi S4s will find familiar. No, the GT3-R doesn’t seem as flickable, but it doesn’t flinch in late braking events or cause you to sweat a sudden decreasing radius. Luxury machines tend to disconnect the driver from the road, but the GT3-R does its best to restore communication through the hardware.
Bentley’s apparent goal of turning its luxury cruiser into a harder-edged corner-seeker has been accomplished—which makes the GT3-R a bit of an odd duck. Despite the trimming of weight, it’s not especially light, and far-quicker machines are available for a lot less money (paging the Porsche 911 Turbo). But you can’t frame the car in rational, comparative terms. It is a bone for the Bentley fan base, an increasingly younger crowd that wants performance. Will this lead to a new R sub-brand? Let’s see how this car is accepted, we’re told. At least Bentley, unlike Rolls, has a history here with its many Red Labels, Green Labels, and Black Labels, as well as its various trips to Le Mans over the decades. With the GT3-R, Bentley is getting ready to push its boundaries again. View Photo Gallery

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Last edited by Space; 10-22-2014 at 12:07 PM.