2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed Test Drive Review: A 771-HP Luxury BEAST

I can still remember my childlike excitement when Bentley revealed the original Continental GT back in 2003. It was so modern, so advanced, so different from anything the company had done previously. And to this day, it is still one of my favorite luxury cars, one that has left a huge mark on me. I'm excited to say that more than two decades later, I am getting to be one of the first people to drive the all-new fourth generation of the Continental GT. This is the 2025 Continental GT Speed. This car has some major changes that we have never seen on this model before, ones that I think make it possibly the best luxury car in the entire world. Let's find out if that claim is actually true. So we start off on the exterior where this all-new fourth generation car, it definitely looks different here up front from the third generation, but they didn't mess with the overall shape too much. This was already a fantastic design, so I'm glad they didn't go too crazy with it. The biggest change that you'll probably notice is that for the first time ever on the Continental GT, the four headlight design is gone. We now just have two headlights rather than the quads. This is kind of inspired by the Bacalar, kind of that very low volume car that was based off the Continental GT but was much more expensive, so now you get a little bit of that on the standard Continental GT. I think it looks fabulous. I'm really not missing the quad headlights. I actually think this looks a little bit more handsome. This color, you'll probably notice, is called Kingfisher Blue. It's one of their Molnar colors, one of their many, many colors that you can have this car painted. Gorgeous metal flake here. I think the Bentley Continental GT pretty much looks good in any color, but this one just really pops. If I had any complaints about the front end, it is that they didn't really integrate the sensors that well, in my personal opinion. You can see the big radar apparatus there, you can see the cameras there, and then you have some parking sensors there. It's pretty hard for an automaker to integrate those perfectly, so if I am going to have one lone complaint, that's really not a terrible one to have. We do have standard 22-inch wheels here on the Continental GT. You can get a variety of different wheel and wheel color options here, but I think these are absolutely gorgeous. We do have something called the Launch Specification, so we have the first edition. There's a lot of stuff in this package, but it's $50,940, so you have these first edition badges and there's a lot of extra stuff that I won't really get into. It'll really take quite a while to list everything that is in that package, but we do have some other optional extras besides that. We actually have the carbon ceramic brakes with black printed calipers. That is a whopping $18,000 option. I think they are pretty awesome, but if you're going to ask me whether or not you think your Bentley needs to have carbon ceramic brakes, my answer would probably be no, but they do really work well as we will find when we get it out on the road. This is still just such a stunning car. They've really just evolved this thing so much from its early roots. The first and second generation of the Continental GT were actually based on the same platform as the Volkswagen Phaeton, but ever since the third generation, we now have the same platform as the Porsche Panamera, but obviously just made a little bit shorter and put into a two-door car, so it just has these really amazing hips here at the back. We've got a very different tail light than we used to have on the previous Continental GT. You actually have kind of a clear, smoked design, but then when the lights fire up, it all turns red. We have our Bentley B, and it says Bentley spelled out. I don't love Bentley spelled out, but you actually can delete that if it's not to your taste and you can just have the Bentley B, but that is just an absolute looker. It just looks so wide, so low, so menacing. It almost has like a disco Volante kind of appearance to it. It really is just really cool, and something that I'll tease you with before we check under the hood later in this video. You'll notice that we do have our fuel cap over on this side, but then we also have another fuel door here. That's because for the first time ever, the Continental GT is a plug-in hybrid, and of course, when you buy a Bentley of any kind, you are going to be getting a fabulous interior, so this particular one has a lovely color scheme that I am absolutely adoring, so they call this imperial blue. It really looks black on camera and even to the eye, but if you really kind of look at it in the sunlight, it does appear more blue, and then we've got more Kingfisher blue accents here on the sides of the seats. Really pops and matches with the Kingfisher blue on the exterior. Because we've got that first edition package, we've got first edition on all of the headrests. We've also got some Kingfisher blue stitching, some diamond quilting here, and then we've got this nice suede as well. You can get these seats however you want them. If you want all one solid color, if you want three different colors, these are heated and ventilated massage seats. Really nice massaging as well. Just a really, really comfy place to sit. Of course, we have our first edition tread plate as well and the Bentley logo, which is going to be illuminated on this car. Let's go ahead and hop on in where we find an absolutely gorgeously appointed cabin. Of course, we have soft closed doors. We've got our double thick windows here as well. Everything is absolutely stunning on this car. They really didn't have to change the interior too much compared to the previous generation Continental GT, and for that, I'm honestly fine with it. I'm loving how the blue interior is matching with this kind of metal turn leaf motif here. This is similar to what you find on a motorcycle, has this a lot. I think they used to do this a lot in the 1930s and 40s, and it just looks so cool here. Of course, you can get wood or carbon fiber or pretty much anything else you would want here because we have the speed model here. We've got this nice speed logo right over there by the air vent. That is super cool looking. Our start button is going to be down here, and when we push it, something really interesting is going to happen. The display is going to rotate out. Gosh, I absolutely love that. We're going to continue as guests here on this car. You're going to notice that this system looks a bit familiar if you've ever been in a new Audi product. It's similar. Obviously, Bentley has its own skin here, so it looks a little bit different than it will on some Audi models, but a lot of the core functions are the same. Even when you leave your device in the car, it says your device is still in the vehicle. Literally the same voice that Audi uses, but that is completely fine with me because it works really well. It has that thing where you can put your finger on something, but then you actually click it and it has a nice tactile function to do so. It is really darn easy to use. I have zero complaints about it. Of course, because we have the rotating display, which is an optional extra, I've never seen a Bentley not have it, so I'm not sure what you don't get when you don't get the rotating screen, but if I push this little screen button right here, we have a third face that we can use. If you want to kind of simplify everything and you don't want to be distracted by a screen, we do have our outside air temperature, we've got our compass, and we've got a stopwatch on these absolutely gorgeous analog gauges. I think these are just absolute works of art. They match really well with the analog clock that sits right here. Simply gorgeous. Absolutely love these little gauges, and of course, you can go ahead and get your screen back and get your wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which is functional there. We do also have some nice controls here on this screen. You'll notice this as Audi's virtual cockpit. It is very similar. You get a little view button that changes how these gauges look, so this is kind of your most simple gauge. If I click this one, you have kind of these ones that look a little bit more like an analog gauge. You can see they say hand-built in England over there on the speedometer, and then Bentley Motors established in 1919 over there on the tachometer, and then I do have one more view, so that kind of pulls these to minimal information, so now if I pull up, let's just say my map, my map is going to be a little bit bigger there in the center, so that's the main three ways that you can customize this. As you can see, we have our range showing that as our gasoline range, and that is going to be our EV range. You can control all of that down here with this little button that says E mode, so you can make it fully EV. It's going to rely on the EV except for when you floor it. It is going to kick the engine on. We'll talk about that later. Hybrid is kind of going to switch between them. Hold is going to leave whatever battery you have in the car, so it's not going to use more, but it's not going to gain more, and then charge will actually use the engine to charge up the battery. Although I have tried that, it only seems to want to go to about 75%. You cannot fully charge it all the way. You will have to plug in to be able to do that, and the charging on this car is about two hours and 45 minutes from empty to full. It's not a full EV, so it doesn't take that long, but it doesn't have DC fast charging or anything like that. We do have some more controls down here. We've got our big Bentley shifter. They've been doing these for quite a while now, where the B button is going to be your lockout to put it into drive and reverse. Of course, we have a 360 camera, push P for park. We've got individual climate controls, not just for temperature, but also for fan speed, so you can have the fans blasting here and low over here, which is a nice function, and then this is going to be our drive mode selector. Bentley mode is going to be your default, balances the best between comfort and sport. You do have a comfort mode that is even softer, a custom mode that you can make with pretty much whatever you want, and then your sport mode is over here. That is going to fire up the engine automatically. I don't believe that you can actually have it be in EV and sport mode. It basically puts it on hold, so you save whatever charge you have by default. If you're in a hurry and you don't want to play around with these modes and you just want to hold whatever battery is in there, your sport mode is going to be the way to do that. We do have some small cup holders here. If I had any complaints about this car, the cup holders are probably my number one. My big Yeti doesn't really fit in this super well. You can see it kind of bumps into the leather here and doesn't really wedge in there all that great, but that is a very minor complaint on what is otherwise a fabulous interior. I should also mention that this infotainment system can be tied to one of three different sound systems, so the base system is going to be a 10-speaker, 650-watt unbranded system. You can get a Bang & Olufsen system that has 18 speakers and about 1,500 watts, or you can go for the big boy, which is the Name Audio. This is a Bentley thing. They've been doing Name Audio for years now. This is going to be 26 speakers, 2,200 watts. It absolutely bumps. Now, in terms of practicality, the Continental GT is one of the bigger two-door cars you can buy. That doesn't exactly mean it is huge. You get this nice metal handle right here that you just pull, tilt the seat forward, and it'll go up as far as it will go. You can see I didn't have to push any extra buttons or things like that. The rear seats are not massive back here. I'll go ahead and show you how big they are. Pull the seat back. It is going to touch my knees, so my knees are touching. If you're above six feet, you're probably not going to want to ride back here. You do have a nice coat hook right here. These windows actually do go down, creating a full open experience. I love when a two-door car can do that. We do have some USB ports in here, as well as a 12-volt outlet with our cup holders, but no air vents back here, from what I can tell, which is kind of an oversight in a car this expensive, but we do at least get really nice leather back here. I think this back seat could for sure be better, but if you really want a nice back seat, you're going to go for the Bentley Flying Spur. If you are planning on taking your Bentley Continental GT on a road trip, just click the little B in the Bentley logo to reveal the trunk. The one thing that I will say Bentley has had to compromise on in order to make this fourth-generation Continental GT is the trunk space. We do have hybrid batteries on this car that are here in the back of the car. We actually have a 4852 weight distribution, so the batteries are back here. We've got our charging cable, which we obviously don't have to bring with us, but it is quite a rather large bag, so this trunk used to be a little bit deeper and a little bit wider than it is now, so it is a little bit compromised in that respect, but for a two-door coupe, it's really honestly not that bad, just a little bit smaller than the previous generation. Now, before we drive this new Continental GT, I want to talk about what's under the hood, because it is a pretty major change compared to the third-generation model. Now, Bentley decided to launch the fourth-generation Continental GT with the speed. They decided to go all out here, so the previous generation speed used a six-liter twin-turbocharged W12 engine, produced 626 horsepower and 664 horsepower. Really hard to top that, but Bentley has done it, actually by downsizing. We now have the four-liter twin-turbocharged V8, which is not necessarily a new engine. Bentley has been using this for quite a while in the Continental GT, but this is the first time you've been able to get this car as a plug-in hybrid, so the V8 itself only produces 591 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. That's a little bit less than the old W12 made, but you also get an electric motor that contributes 187 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque. The total output is 771 horsepower and 738 pound-feet of torque, way more than you used to get from the old W12. This thing is an absolute monster, and I can't wait to show you how it is out on the road. All right, so let's get out on the road in the new Bentley Continental GT, and why don't we start by finding out what 771 horsepower really feels like. Foot on the brake, foot on the gas for launch control, and whoa! Oh my goodness gracious, it just pulls like a freight train, oh my god. It's incredible that something this big and this heavy can get off the line like that. Bentley says that this will get from 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds, but I gotta call Bentley out on this because my data recorder actually says that this car can do it in 2.92 seconds. That is supercar speed in a luxury GT with massage chairs and double thick glass. I gotta do that launch again. That is, oh my god, incredible. All right, launch control, so easy to do. Foot on the brake, foot on the gas, boom! Oh my god, you just get the smack from that electric motor, it just hits you instantly like an anvil, it just drops, it's like gravity, instant, there's no, it's just boom, right off the line. You've got the 8-speed dual-clutch transmission, this is actually the same transmission that you get in a Porsche. This is PDK, 8-speed unit, shifts as quick as you could possibly want a car to shift. Big nice metal paddle shifters with nice knurling behind them, incredible speed here. All-wheel drive system puts the power down. That V8, it sounds almost like a motorcycle engine, just real rumbly, pit-of-the-chest type of stuff here, that grr, that gurgle, but it sounds like it's far away, it sounds like it's removed, it's not like an obnoxious roar, it's definitely a low growl that you can kind of hear somewhere off in the distance back there. This is a Bentley after all, this is not a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Challenger, this is British muscle, this is luxury muscle right here. And I've got to say, having never driven the Continental GT with the W12, but I have driven a flying Spur with the W12, I've got to say, I think this V8 sounds better. The W12 made a really cool kind of whoosh, whoosh noise, but that definitely sounds angrier, that definitely sounds meaner than the W12 did. And in terms of power delivery, I already went through the numbers with you, this is just on a different league from where that old W12 was, and the fact that's so amazing is I've already had the car in Sport mode, so that's going to fire up the engine, it's going to keep the batteries charged, you're not going to discharge the battery, but if I go ahead and put it back in Bentley mode, now it's going to default to EV and Hybrid mode, now it's silent. The engine is completely off, I've got the electric power, I've got a 21.8 kWh battery, so I've got about 25 miles of electric range, although based on what I'm seeing from the computer, you probably will get above 30 miles depending on how you drive, although this is a very big, heavy car, and you're only getting about 187 horsepower from that electric motor, so when you floor it, it doesn't really move. This is not a car that's meant to be driven on both, it's kind of the EV will get you to the store and get you through your neighborhood and whatever, but you kind of lose that speed element when you're just driving on electric only power, but that's kind of to be expected in a car like this. Now I have tried to just do a 0-60 run in electric mode, but unfortunately Bentley doesn't really let you just do electric, if you pin the throttle for too long, it's going to say okay, you want some power, and it's going to fire up the engine, as I just did now. There it is. I got a comment on how seamless the transition is from electric to gasoline power, there's no guh-guh-guh firing up, it's just boom, engine on, power delivery gone, seamless transition, you just start going faster basically. You feel it go from not that fast to boom, there you go, all of your speed and performance. Now I am going to put it back into sport mode for just a second here, because I've got to talk about the performance active chassis. So this is the area where I think, besides the power, because the power is amazing, but this is where Bentley has improved the most, because when I chuck this thing into a corner, it no longer feels like I'm driving a big giant GT, it feels like I'm driving a Porsche. The steering, super nice, it doesn't have, it's not like too communicative that it gets annoying on the highway, it's still very light, but it's got a nice precision, you can really feel the car talking to you, the chassis is so nicely balanced. The performance active chassis is comprised of a lot of different things, so we have all wheel steering, this car has an incredible turning radius for how big of it it is, we've got torque vectoring, we've got electronic stability control, and then we've got active anti-roll. So it's using that hybrid system to kind of prime the suspension when you go around corners so that it doesn't pitch in and lean too much. So that means when you take corners at absurd speeds, even though this car is super gigantic, it just doesn't lean. Here we go, I'm supposed to slow down for this, nope, barely, barely, barely, barely, barely felt the car wiggle around, it just stays so flat, and then we also have some optional carbon ceramic brakes on this car, it can really stop it super quick, crazy how well these brakes work. And then you just have that soundtrack, and then when you're ready to put it into comfort mode, we've got Bentley mode, and then we have comfort mode that's even more comfortable, you can just go ahead and do that, stick on your massage sheets, now it just becomes the ultimate cruiser, it's just so quiet, you know, usually when you build a car like this, you have to sacrifice something. When you make it so comfortable, it's not going to handle well, when you make it super handle well, it's not going to be comfortable, when you make it super fast, it's not going to turn. Bentley just threw all of that out of the window, they say money can't buy you happiness, but I guess if you spend enough money, your faults just kind of go away! That's kind of how I like to describe this car, it is almost faultless in how it drives, it does every single thing well, it handles well, it goes well, it's one of the most comfortable cars you can possibly buy. There is no downside to this, aside from the price. And I think that really just leaves us with one question, if you're in the market for the ultimate car, and you have an unlimited budget, is this Bentley Continental GT Speed the one you should buy? Let's pull over and talk about it. Unfortunately, it is now time to say goodbye to our 2025 Bentley Continental GT, and more unfortunately, I have to leave you with the harsh reality of how much this car costs. I have almost nothing negative to say about it, but with a car this good, unfortunately, you shouldn't be coming to expect an affordable price tag. The starting price of the Continental GT Speed is $302,100, so we're already starting off really high. I mentioned that first edition launch specification is over $50,000, the color is about $3,300, and then we also have about $12,000 extra of colors, I believe that is to do with the exterior paint, $18,000 for the ceramic brakes, and then we were supposed to have self-leveling wheel badges from Molnar for about $700, kind of cheap in terms of Bentley options, but as you can see, this car does not have them for whatever reason. That brings the total price with destination, which is about $4,000, to $392,025, so darn nearly $400,000. Now interestingly enough, according to the window sticker that I have for this car, we do not get hit with a gas guzzler tax, so that is something very different from the previous W12 model, which definitely did get hit with a gas guzzler tax, so hey, if you're really wealthy, you'll save money on your gas guzzler tax, that's kind of a nice deal, but this is a really, really expensive car, there's no shortage of more affordable options that you can get, we're talking things like the BMW M8, the Mercedes SL63, those are all way cheaper than this, but there's just something so elegant, so well put together about this. There will probably be a more affordable Continental GT coming, I don't know whether they'll just drop the plug-in hybrid and just do the V8, maybe they'll keep the plug-in hybrid but do a V6 under the hood, I'm really curious to see what Bentley has coming, because honestly, the speed is awesome, it's so great to have that much power, but I really wouldn't mind having this car with about 550 to 600 horsepower instead of the 771, I don't think you would really lose that much of the experience if this car was just a little bit slower, it would still be an incredible, incredible car. Anyway, let me know in the comments, would you buy the Bentley Continental GT, would you buy something else really expensive, like an Aston Martin DB12 or a DBS, or would you save some money and get a BMW or Mercedes or an Audi, let me know in the comments, and as always, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like, subscribe and ring that notification bell to be alerted of our latest videos, and I'll see you next time.