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Does Bentley’s mysterious new model signal the end of the Continental GT?

2017 Bentley Mulsanne
Ronan Glon/Digital Trends
This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is in full swing, but Bentley is already looking ahead to the upcoming Geneva Auto Show that opens its doors in early March. The company has published a brief teaser video on its official Twitter account to preview its most extreme model ever.

The film does a good job of keeping the car’s overall design under wraps, but it reveals the yet-unnamed model has been upgraded with a large carbon fiber spoiler out back, carbon fiber air vents integrated into the hood, and specific alloy wheels that hide massive brakes. That’s not a lot to go on, but we can already tell the car is a brawnier evolution of the Continental GT that has been going to the gym.

It’s difficult to imagine Bentley building a lightweight, performance-oriented variant of the Continental GT without making modifications under the hood. Currently, the quickest version of the coupe is the GT Speed, which hits 60 mph from a stop in just 3.9 seconds. It’s equipped with a 6.0-liter W12 engine rated at 633 horsepower and a mighty 620 pound-feet of torque. It’s unclear how much additional power engineers can squeeze out of the 12-cylinder, though putting the GT on a diet will certainly play a large role in boosting performance.

Of course, this is all idle speculation. The good news is that we won’t have to wait long to learn more about Bentley’s next new model. The car be introduced online this Friday, and it will greet the public for the first time in March at the Geneva show. It will likely be the last variant of the Continental GT, because the coupe will finally be replaced by a brand-new model before the year draws to a close.

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Ronan Glon
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
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