Bentley spokespeople are quick to correct you if you ask exactly what the Porsche-developed MSB platform has allowed the company to do differently with this new Continental GT.
That’s because the MSB was a group-wide project with which key Bentley people were involved at the earliest stages, so it’s probably no fairer to say that the Continental is built on Porsche underpinnings than the Panamera is made on Bentley ones.
Semantics aside, the new platform has allowed the two-door GT to grow slightly in every dimension but most notably between the axles, where more than 100mm has been added to the wheelbase.
The car’s monocoque is built from a mix of aluminium and high-strength steel and is dressed in superformed aluminium bodywork, except for at the rear, where a composite plastic bootlid features.
Under the bonnet, you’ll find Bentley’s familiar 6.0-litre W12 engine, recently re-engineered with new cylinder heads to allow both direct and indirect fuel injection and cylinder-shutdown variable-displacement running. It provides 626bhp and 664lb ft – a 44bhp improvement on the car’s direct predecessor and quite a lot more torque than even the outgoing GT Speed produced.
