British Racing Green has been in Bentley's genes ever since the late W.O. founded the company, but lately the carmaker has switched to new shade of green - downsizing.
Bentley's Continental GT has been around since 2003 and the recent major revamp has brought more than just fresh air – the
Continental GT W12 now has a nonidentical twin. The newcomer thinks it knows better than its brother's six liters, hiding a four-liter twin-turbo V8 engine under its hood.
The Continental GT V8 prides itself with a 40 percent reduction in fuel consumption, but, regardless of the affirmation’s real world correspondence, there's much more to this Grand Tourer than that.
A company like Bentley doesn't afford to change the values of its cars too often. Nevertheless, when the engineers were tasked with developing the new model, they rubbed their hands in excitement, knowing that this was their opportunity to gift the car with bits and pieces that don't fit the traditional profile of the W12 model.
These are details that have the potential to make a difference, from a new exhaust system to styling that's a bit less uptight. For Elegance God's sake, they even fitted it with red badges instead of the traditional green ones.
Even though it doesn't want to focus the discussion on this, the V8 version of the Bentley Continental GT is also more athletic when it comes to the technical side.
But weight-related numbers can always prove deceiving when it comes to cars like these, so you have to grab the wheel in order to feel the difference.
We gained possession of the key, not necessarily an inspiring piece of kit, but we couldn't care less about this. That's because it unlocks something we'd been looking forward to put to the test for quite some time - a new face for Bentley.
The V8's "good morning" is profound, so while the black hue of our test car wants to make it seem all serious, we can already tell it's playful. This may be the same car with a new engine, but we've got many questions for it – there's no time to lose then, so we immediately start interrogating the eight cylinders in front of us.