Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

Bentley Continental GT ‘Monster by Mulliner’ makes some noise at CES 2016

Add as a preferred source on Google

Bentley is getting in on the CES 2016 festivities with a customized Continental GT built in partnership with Monster. Called the “Monster by Mulliner,” it’s got a sound system designed with the attention to detail only this famously fastidious British carmaker could sanction.

Bentley’s CES show car features a 3,400-watt Monster audio system, with 16 speakers hand selected by “Head Monster” Noel Lee. Pumped up sound systems are normally something one associates with old Honda Civics and Ford Mustangs driven by people with backward-facing baseball caps, but high-performance sound is fast becoming as much a mark of luxury as leather and wood trim.

Recommended Videos

To highlight the car’s specialness, Bentley decked out the interior in Monster’s colors of black and red, and added special seats from its Mulliner bespoke division. Taking its name from a coachbuilder, Mulliner handles various car-customization projects for Bentley. There’s also a special compartment that houses 24-karat gold Monster headphones. They’re the perfect accessory for a Bentley, really.

The black-and-red theme carries over to the exterior, which looks suitably monstrous. The main paint color is “Onyx,” with “Hotspur” accents. Bentley also added a custom body kit and radiator-shell bezel, and “stylized” the black hood vents. Red brake calipers and gloss black wheels complete the look.

There are no apparent mechanical changes to this Continental GT V8 S, which uses a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8, rather than the 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 found in other Continental variants. It may be the smaller of the two engines, but the V8 still produces 520 horsepower and 502 pound-feet of torque, which is sent to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission.

A stock Continental GT V8 S coupe weighs 5,060 pounds, and the Monster sound system may have added even more to that. But this car still has enough grunt to do 0 to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds, and to reach a top speed of 192 mph. What song would you play while doing that?

Stephen Edelstein
Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…
Your next car’s software update could become its biggest security risk
Your next car could receive updates like your smartphone. That's also becoming a cybersecurity nightmare.
OTA technology allows manufacturers to remotely deliver software updates.

Modern cars are no longer machines that stay the same after they leave the showroom. Increasingly, they're becoming software-defined vehicles that receive new features, bug fixes, and security patches wirelessly, much like smartphones. But while over-the-air (OTA) updates have made vehicle maintenance easier and cheaper, cybersecurity experts are warning that the same technology could also become one of the automotive industry's biggest security challenges.

Researchers and policymakers are now calling for stronger oversight as connected vehicles become increasingly dependent on remote software updates. Their concern isn't just about hackers stealing personal data. It's about someone potentially interfering with the operation of a moving vehicle.

Read more
This sleek Chinese EV pairs supercar styling with three AI brains
The Xpeng L03 is an AI supercomputer disguised as a stylish family SUV
Xpeng L03

Xpeng’s latest electric vehicle carries enough processing power to make the term "smart car" actually sound more realistic than it actually is. The new Xpeng L03 debuted simultaneously in Europe and China on July 16, with the company presenting it across 65 markets. Available as a fully electric vehicle and an L03 Power X range-extender, the coupe-SUV is Xpeng’s most internationally focused model so far. Market-specific prices and sales dates remain unannounced.

Three AI chips and Google Maps built right in

Read more
A new sodium battery posts wild four-minute charging numbers, but don’t expect it in an EV yet
The breakthrough could improve fast charging and battery life, but the study hasn’t demonstrated those results in a production-sized pack
EV Charger

A new sodium-metal battery has posted a charging number that makes today’s EVs look painfully slow. In laboratory testing, the cell operated at a 15C rate, equivalent to completing a charge or discharge in roughly four minutes.

That doesn’t mean researchers plugged in an electric car and watched it fill up before the driver finished buying coffee. The result came from a small experimental cell using a new quasi-solid electrolyte, while the larger pouch-cell prototype delivered far less dramatic performance.

Read more