The Continental GT is one of Bentley's sexiest machines ever, and the brand's best-selling model. In a diamond-encrusted nutshell, the luxurious yet athletic Conti GT is very important to Crewe. It has remained largely unchanged for seven years, and by now, the once undeniably eye-catching shape is showing its age. It's understandable, then, that Bentley's engineering and design teams have invested countless development hours and hundreds of millions of dollars to craft what you see here: a cleaner, more powerful and oh-so-much-sexier Continental GT coupe.


Contrary to how it might appear, Bentley officials maintain that the 2011 Bentley Continental GT is an all-new model, not simply a refresh. Yes, its body isn't a drastic reinterpretation of Dirk van Braeckel's original design, but there are new, seductive details, like staggered bi-xenon headlamps and jeweled LED daytime running lights. With its sweeping position set well into the thick front shoulders, the ensemble emphasizes speed. Seamless super-formed aluminum panels utilize no welding, allowing for deeply cut, traditional power lines to run unimpeded from ahead of the front wheel wells to the muscular haunches. The chiseled features have never looked as powerful.


Another traditional Crewe trait -- the matrix front grille -- stands nearly upright, giving a renewed boldness to the nose. Granted, the nearly two-inch-wider track (65.51 inches front/65.15 inches rear) and standard 20-inch, five-spoke wheels (21-inch optional) also add to the effect. At the stern, the floating LED taillights wrap around the coupe's abstract wings and lead into the car's bulging glutes. (The logo's wings are a longstanding Conti design flourish, stemming from the 1950 R-Type Continental.) Between the wings resides a pronounced double-horseshoe trunklid, a cue carried over from the Mulsanne flagship. It looks tidy with its flat facade, yet underneath the modern lid, trunk space is cut by 0.5 cubic-feet to 12.6 cubic-feet. Also shaped in Mulsanne fashion are the car's skinny, elliptical chrome exhaust tips, which expel the fumes created by the twin-turbocharged, 567-horsepower 6.0-liter W-12.