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200mph, roof down in a Bentley
08 July 2009
In this week's exclusive autocar.co.uk video Andrew Frankel tries to hit 200mph in a Bentley Continental GTC Speed - with the roof down.
It's a barn-storming plan that's required plenty of planning, and which was fraught with difficulty.
Watch the Bentley Continental GTC Speed video here
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Frankel explains: "Leafing through the press materials for the new Bentley Continental GTC Speed, I noticed that its claimed top speed is 200mph. Such a neat, round number.
See the image gallery of the test here
"Like all other convertible car makers, however, Bentley quotes its top speed statistics for its models ‘roof up’. So could it be that a GTC Speed could be made to travel at 200mph with the roof down? And if it did, how would it feel?
"On the Beaufort Scale, wind speed above a piffling 73mph is classified as a hurricane, so the idea of driving roof down at something close to three times that speed sparked the curiosity. I put in the call.
"The man on the other end of the telephone was Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, head of engineering at Bentley. And when I asked him if the GTC Speed would do 200mph with the roof down, he replied that he wasn’t sure, but there would be fun to be had finding out."
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