The Bentley Continental GT has never been a Bentley. At the moment it’s an Audi A8 coupe. Before that it was a shorty Phaeton. In the future it will be a Porsche 928, so to speak.
I say this because Bentley boss Wolfgang Dürheimer once more confirmed in an interview with Autocar what we’ve known for quite some time: Bentley’s upcoming Continentals will share the same platform as on the new 2017 Porsche Panamera.
It’s called the MSB platform, the big big brother to the MQB platform under the current Golf (not to mention what seems like every other one of Volkswagen Group’s products). Porsche was responsible for the development of MSB, building the thing out of aluminum and steel not greatly unlike the current generation 911.
As Dürheimer puts it:
MSB is a perfect start for the Continental GT. It allows, on the design side, a new approach to the matrix and proportions. I’m in love with this car. We had a design presentation and even people that are not in our core team were speechless. I predict the highest-volume uptake for the Continental ever.
It was a great strategic decision to use MSB. The degree of design freedom and advantage in proportions and positive outcome in weight is tremendous.”
That means the Conti GT will effectively be a two-door, front-engine, rear-drive Porsche-designed coupe, complete with a powerful and complicated V8 engine. Basically, it’s the 928 successor all of us weirdos and idiots have been lusting after for decades.
And if you think that the Continental GT is too big to count as a modern 928, Dürheimer also confirmed that Bentley is working on producing the gorgeous EXP 10 Speed 6 coupe they showed at Geneva last year. Righteous.