Bentley Continental GT S: Super Grand Tourer | First Look

The Bentley Continental GT is a car that will go down in history as the one that saved the brand from Crewe. After Bentley existed just as an alternative to Rolls-Royce and faced multiple owners, the brand had lost its own identity, but then came Volkswagen and the first product was a bold move, a grand tourer with the speed to match thoroughbred Italians, the luxury to match yachts and a design that cemented the Bentley DNA for years. The German engineering expertise came with one of the greatest engines of all-time, the 6.0-litre twin-turbocharged W12 engine, with 550bhp on tap and a top speed exceeding 315kmph. The Continental GT quite literally created the luxury super tourer category.

Skip to 2026, and the Continental GT is now in its fourth generation, and has brought radical changes to what the car has stood for, and this is now in India. Every car that leaves the assembly line in Crewe, England is special, considering the innumerable paint, fabric and colour combinations customers can choose, but the particular example on these pages, a little bit more so as this is the Continental GT S, and that suffix means that this gets certain exclusive bits, that the lowly customers of the base or Azure trims simply cannot. This is what the customer chooses when they want their Continental to wear some sporty sneakers.

The design evolution of the Conti from its first-gen to this, the fourth, has been phenomenal, but the latest gen is the first time that the brand has moved away from its typical dual headlamp theme, and has replaced it with a single unit that features a brow that extends outwards. The grille, meanwhile, is larger, to feed air to the new engine that sits in the bay, but the large radar module that requires a hole in the grille makes it look odd. ADAS isn’t all that necessary that it impedes the design so much that it becomes disruptive, especially when it is a safety feature that isn’t mandated. It still looks indistinguishably like the GT, it still has the muscle, albeit with sleekness and very visible aerodynamics.

The silhouette still harks back to the original Conti, but with the latest one, the lines are even smoother. From the moment the windscreen starts to the end of the tail, it is a single continuous line. The muscular wheel arches are even more pronounced, while the rear has a lip spoiler. The tail lamps are new, with a crystalline design inside ‘eye’-shaped housings, while it shows off its large twin-tip exhausts. As part of the Continental GT S’ exclusive bits, the Bentley badge, the grille, the window garnish, the ORVM caps and some other bits are blacked out, and it looks truly badass, while the tail lamps feature a smoked effect. The silhouette is what made the original Conti so unique, and with the latest one that trend continues.

Inside, the Continental treats its occupants to one of the most exclusive cabins, with full leather upholstery that can be specced as the customer wishes, including the floor mats, and the finish for the dashboard itself. Customers can choose the material, the colour, the secondary colour, the stitching, the piping, nearly everything inside the cabin, ensuring that their car is uniquely specced. What catches the eye is the attention to detail, the knurling on the steering stalks, the air con vents, the buttons and the knobs are just poetry from the craftspeople, which is an important bit, because this is one of the few cars in today’s day and age, that is hand-built in Crewe, UK.

My favourite bit is the revolving central panel with three faces – the blank face, the analogue dials and the infotainment display, and no point for guessing which one looks the coolest, and this is very important because, in most cars one can’t do without the screen, because their house important functions, but the Bentley while being very digital is still analogue, so you can simply put the central panel on the blank face and give yourself a bit of digital detox.

Bentley could have made things ‘modern’ with touch controls, but no, they chose to make the plunger-type airflow control, or the Bentley button that one has to press to unlock the gear selector, or the physical dials and buttons on the central console. They’re present because customers need to feel rich, and Bentley understands all too well that richness doesn’t come from massive screens, but from the sensation of each action.

Beneath this beautiful skin, the Continental GT S is no less than an engineering marvel. While the W12 is no more, it has been replaced by a powertrain that is future-proof. It uses a 4.0-litre twin-turbo flat-plane crank V8, that is paired to a battery and an electric motor, and the combined system output is 680bhp, and 930Nm of torque. And this engine, with its sportier exhaust on the GT S sounds glorious.

And like a lot of other top-tier cars, the Continental is now exclusively a plug-in hybrid, and this means that this car can be driven in areas where ‘pure combustion’ vehicles aren’t allowed, but for India, this means that customers miss out on the heavy price cuts that imports from UK are enjoying owing to the UK-India FTA as it doesn’t benefit hybrids at all. But on the flip side, this can run for a 100km on electric power alone so it does mean plenty of clean running in city driving. And while it weighs the same as the standard GT, the S gets the sportier suspension from the GT Speed, and this means that the S can launch to 100kmph faster, in 3.5 seconds and has a higher top-speed.

While there is no exact price listing for the Continental GT S, one can put this particular example in the Rs 7-8 crore (ex-showroom) ballpark and there is nothing really to compare against this luxurious super tourer, except the Aston Martin Vanquish.

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