//DRIVEFour days, a dozen Bentleys, and one brand-new Continental GTC S navigating the great Dolomite passes. One question rode shotgun the entire time: does the newest flagship deliver on the promise of its name?
On an unremarkable Thursday in April, after a long day of editorial chores, I walk to the mailbox more out of habit than expectation. Nestled among the usual bills is a postcard-sized envelope, and a raised, gleaming winged emblem stops me in my tracks before I even read the sender. Bentley. It could only mean good things.
It’s just a small card, nothing more, and yet it sets in motion what I’m now, months later, able to write about: an invitation to a grand tour through South Tyrol and the Dolomites. Four days, two hotels, a dozen passes, 12 Bentleys, and for us one brand-new Continental GTC S. Between that moment at the mailbox and the first hairpin bend lie weeks of quiet anticipation – and, as it turns out, exactly the right mood for what’s to come. Because a tour like this isn’t measured in lap times or kilometers. It’s measured by how well you were along the way. That’s almost a forgotten discipline, and for four days we’d relearn it together.
It’s a long haul from Hanover down to the Tyrolean highlands, and we’re doing it in one go. You climb into a car in the morning you barely know, and step out of one you trust by evening. In between lies just about every kind of road Central Europe has to offer: the long straightaway of the motorway, the tight village bypass, the first climb into the mountains, and smack in the middle, Munich, with stop-and-go traffic, light after light, all the sluggish everyday grind of a big city. It’s the most honest test a grand tourer can face, because it leaves nothing out, and the Continental passes it long before we’ve seen the first pass. It does so quietly, and it’s only the first day; what this car truly is will only emerge over the coming stages, piece by piece. For now, there’s just the quiet impression that nothing fazes it.
You feel it the moment you step inside. Our GTC S is blue, with a blue soft top and dark-blue leather that looks almost black in the shade and only reveals its depth in sunlight. Naim audio, leather wherever you reach, ventilated massage seats that adjust themselves without being asked. None of it pushes itself forward; it only makes itself known gradually, like a well-appointed room in which a new detail catches your eye every hour. In Munich’s sluggish traffic, the car glides along silently and electrically, without hurry, almost unobtrusively, and beyond the freeway lies the first real surprise.
Because once we’re past Munich, the rain starts, the top is down, and it stays down. Anyone experiencing this for the first time instinctively reaches for the button that closes the roof, but that makes no sense for two reasons. First, we’re already way past the 50 km/h limit: the soft top opens and closes up to that speed. Second-and this is the real point-it isn’t even necessary. We sit shielded between windscreen and the deep, warm seats while the rain is carried in a shallow arc over us and far behind by the slipstream. The first drops land, following the aerodynamics, on the rear deck well past our luggage, which fills the back seat. Up front, everything stays dry. You’re in the middle of the weather yet untouched by it, and it’s the first of many moments over these days when the car doesn’t try to impress but simply reassures. Incidentally, it remains the only stretch of rain on the entire trip; what follows is the South.
When we finally reach the Interalpen Hotel Tyrol high above the Seefelder Plateau at the end of that long day, the car is no longer a stranger. It has only hinted at what it’s capable of on this first day, and nothing had to be loud. The real story begins tomorrow, in the mountains, but a first inkling is already there.
The Interalpen is a grand house with that quiet self-assurance that expensive architecture in beautiful locations sometimes exudes. Down in the parking garage, the cars for the coming days are gradually gathering, and it’s an illuminating collection-less a museum than a snapshot of what the brand stands for right now. The oldest car is a second-series Continental Cabriolet, about ten years old; everything else here is from the last four years, give or take. A brand-new Bentayga serves as the camera crew’s rolling base, a younger Flying Spur has arrived with its owner, and nestled among them is our GTC S, the youngest of the bunch, unveiled only at the start of the year.
The house sets the tone with sweeping panoramas, a solid bar, and a wellness area whose sheer size impresses. The rooms are spacious and cosy, with walk-in wardrobes and bathrooms you don’t want to leave in a hurry; service is consistently friendly, attentive, and present. That said, not everything quite lives up to its own billing, and precisely because the house gets so much right, the fine gaps become all the more noticeable. The menu is good without being dazzling; the breakfast buffet is vast-perhaps too vast – and we’d have preferred fewer choices and more curation, more quality over sheer quantity. The gym looks pretty but falls short of what such an expansive wellness area deserves. These aren’t flaws; they’re the nuances one still debates at this level.
That evening we dine together for the first time. Some at the table are strangers this evening; others we already know from past events. So the first get-together feels like both a reunion and an introduction. What people talk about is predictable yet never dull: cars, routes, the anticipation of tomorrow. How differently this group will drive, how varied the temperaments behind the wheel, we’ll only discover on the road the next day. Tonight, what matters is that everyone has the same long weekend ahead – and that they’re here for much the same reason.
What brings these people together isn’t a car for a single road. A Bentley belongs on the Grand Tour, certainly, but it’s equally at home on a mountain pass or, on another occasion, a racetrack. What unites the group runs deeper: a passion for a brand, almost a way of life, and in any case a shared awareness. A sense of the good and the fine, of quality and above all else, of effortless command. It’s the same mindset that shaped the car that will roll out first thing tomorrow morning.
Thursday brings the first group ride – and simultaneously the transfer to South Tyrol: over the Timmelsjoch Pass, down toward Meran, across the Jaufen Pass and onward into the Gadertal valley, climbing to Alta Badia, where the second overnight stop awaits. The Timmelsjoch is pure pleasure. The road twists upward in long, clean sweeps to the toll station near the summit, and the view from up there is breathtaking-one of those high-Alpine panoramas that make you pull over just to take it in. It’s a stretch that’s genuinely fun to drive, bathed in that cool, crystalline light you only find way up high, and everything that had hinted at itself on the approach now unfolds in a series of curves.
Beyond Meran comes the Jaufen Pass, tighter and more concentrated, and here you see what the rear-axle steering can do: this long, heavy ship carves into the sharp bends as if it were half a meter shorter. “Tighter still?” it seems to say, “No problem-just don’t expect me to rush.” What felt like effortless command on the autobahn turns into playful verve in the mountains, and both come from the same car.
“No rush,” say the cognoscenti: no haste. A Bentley is always fast-faster than most – but it never needs to hurry, and it never slips from the role of gentleman. -On the essence of a Bentley
On this first shared leg, you also notice how varied the group is. One driver is up front and brisk, another trails behind and takes it in; some know the format, others are still finding their feet. On a tour that isn’t from a ready-made club, that’s inevitable – and it will continue from tomorrow on. By late afternoon we roll up to Alta Badia, above St. Kassian, and reach the Dolomiti Wellness Hotel Fanes, framed by the Dolomites’ rocky amphitheater, a house of wood and stone. Here we’ll spend the next nights, and it will be the stop that ends up stealing our hearts.
The Friday belongs to the king stage in miniature, a loop over five mountain passes, starting and ending at the same house: Grödner Joch, Sella Joch, Pordoi, Falzarego, Valparolo-names that anyone who has ever held a steering wheel in the Dolomites knows by heart. On paper, it’s eighty-eight kilometres and roughly two hours, but in reality it’s an entire morning, because on roads like these you don’t drive to arrive. And on this particular morning, something happens to the group that everyone had secretly hoped for: the convoy from the day before transforms into a single organism. Everyone now knows the driving style of the car ahead; the faster ones pull ahead while the rest linger to savour the view a little longer. From above, a chain of paint in blue, black and silver, yellow, gold and green winds through the switchbacks, each car a breath behind the next, all moving in unison.
The panorama makes it easy. At every pass the same, almost impertinent beauty: monumental walls, razor-sharp ridges, valleys that appear even deeper in the shifting play of light and shadow, and above it all a sky that, apart from a single thunderstorm, remained regal throughout those days. At the Pordoi summit, the Savoia Hotel awaits-a venerable red-and-white building steeped in history – and there the coffee break is already laid out, that one moment in the morning when everyone steps out, warms their hands around a steaming cup and talks about the very bend that has stayed in each person’s mind. It’s the quiet punchline of such an outing that the conversations rarely revolve around the cars themselves and almost always around the road. Afterward, it’s on over the Falzarego, and with the Valparolo the fifth and, for today, final pass is completed before we return to Fanes in the early afternoon, where the day still holds a second half that has nothing to do with driving.
What doesn’t fit into a daily itinerary waits outside the hotel early one afternoon: a helicopter flight over the Dolomites. We climb in, lift off, and the massif we’ve been circling all morning from below now peels away beneath us. The pilot flies like a Bentley drives-confident, experienced, masterful; you’d think he’d been tuned up in Crewe as well. He takes us over a summit, threads between two rock towers, and lets the machine drop just enough, deliberately and precisely, to make the stomach flutter. Every time the passengers let out a spontaneous squeal, the adrenaline spike, and then the laughter. It’s a high point that tilts the tour out of the horizontal for a moment-best kind – and shows the Dolomites anew, from a vantage no driver’s seat can match.
The evening provides an even better reminder that the trip’s highlights aren’t only found up high-and in a place you’d least expect it. A twenty-minute shuttle ride takes us to Maso Runch, a Ladin guesthouse run by the Nagler family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse high above Badia. Two small parlors, separated by the old wood-fired stove that once heated the living and sleeping quarters and now warms the dining room, where the pork knuckle has been roasting in its own juices for generations, fired by timber from the family’s own woods. The kitchen is simple, unadorned, and all the better for it. What emerges from the flames-knuckle and spare ribs, slow-cooked with patience-is nothing short of sublime; the ribs, without exaggeration, are the best we’ve ever tasted. No polish, no pretense, just an oven, good meat, and a company that, on this evening, has finally become family.
Back at the Fanes, the house grows closer to our hearts with every day, and in hindsight it’s the true home of this journey. Breakfast surpasses even the spread at Interalpen-fresh, regional produce, top-notch quality in small portions, the kind of curated restraint we prefer to any sprawling buffet. The slowly rotating sauna with its panoramic view is a playful touch; the steam sessions are well-judged, the mood relaxed, less strained than elsewhere. Add a pleasant, comfortably warm rooftop pool, a first-rate wellness area, and rooms that strike the perfect balance between rustic and modern-rarely achieved so well. Even the single thunderstorm of the week lingers as a cozy memory, enjoyed indoors while outside the cliffs gleam in the storm-light more impressively than under a blue sky.
Saturday is the all-day tour, the sweeping arc: 207 kilometres, roughly five hours, a grand loop through the eastern Dolomites and back again. Over the Falzarego Pass towards Cortina, then the Passo Giau with its famous switchbacks, onward via the Staulanza and down into the Zoldano valley before the road narrows towards the Passo Duran, the tightest, most intimate stretch of the entire route. The Duran is narrow, and on a fine June day it’s packed, a colourful mix of the kinds of visitors these mountains always draw in summer: cars, motorcycles, racing bikes, camper vans, hikers along the roadside. Things get tight at times, especially where motorcycles cut corners, yet in the end everything flows because everyone gives a little when they need to. Even here the Bentley proves more capable than one would expect from a car of its length and weight; it shrinks when it must, and expands again the moment the road allows.
Atop the Duran, at the Rifugio San Sebastiano, the coffee break is laid on; lunch awaits us later at the Passo San Pellegrino, in the Rifugio Flora Alpina, where a parking spot has been reserved for the cars-conveniently doubling as the perfect stage for the group photo. Then it’s the journey home via the Fedaia, at the foot of the Marmolada with its glacier and reservoir, one final grand vista before the loop closes at the Fanes. In the evening a champagne reception, a last shared meal, and over it all the quiet certainty that tomorrow will bring the end. It’s the moment every good trip reaches when you start to miss it in secret, even while it’s still unfolding.
What remains, in the end, is the car-and with it a thought that surprised me. The hybrid struck me as genuinely positive for the first time in a vehicle of this kind. We never once plugged it into a charging socket, yet every morning the GTC S had enough charge to glide from the courtyard in near silence, without waking anyone, slip soundlessly up to hotel drop-offs, or creep through a 20 km/h zone. And even then it felt unmistakably Bentley: substantial, massive, powerful, never compromised. When the V8 fires up, thanks to the optional Akrapovič sports exhaust it growls deep and sonorous, with a burble on start-up that settles into a bassy, relaxed growl in Sport mode-power for any situation. Bentley shows with this car that cutting-edge tech can feel wonderfully traditional: every old-world attribute of the brand is back, without irony, vigorous and cultivated, sporty and assured, fast but never rushed, never in a hurry. The build quality is consistently top-tier.
If I had to name a single gripe, it’s the centre-console armrest cover-familiar from the corporate parts bin and especially the current RS6-that slides backward when you lean on it. In the Audi it irks me every time; in the Bentley, against the otherwise flawless build, it stands out. Bentley’s response was that the demonstrator from Crewe was the culprit and that production cars don’t behave this way. And honestly? Even if they did, it’s a flaw only I noticed, and only because I was hunting for imperfections. The armrest was the biggest I could find. Isn’t that a lovely first-world problem?
As for the organisation, I won’t launch into a paean; it isn’t necessary. The tour made plain what Bentley Hannover, Haus Kamps, gets right every day: a team that clearly loves its work, direct and clear communication, little turnover in staff, and therefore reliable, familiar contacts. Reliable, friendly, competent-those are the words that come to mind about the dealership. We’re classic Bentley owners with all the usual little aches, demands and foibles that older cars bring, and we’re always well looked after. On this tour it was no different, just in a prettier setting.
On Sunday the circle closes where it began: breakfast, checkout, the individual drive home. The cars are dustier, the chats shorter, the glances calmer, and nobody has gained anything because there was nothing to gain. And yet everyone returns richer than they left. A good route changes the driver not by what lies at the end, but by what happens along the way-and these four days offered plenty. As Cavafy put it in “Ithaka,” valid for every journey: “As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.” The destination matters less than the road that leads to it. We’ve written before on //Drive about the idea of such circular tours, about driving in stages and why the circle is the most honest line a car can trace; this tour was the proof of the pudding. It all started with an embossed emblem on a small card, on an unremarkable Thursday in April. One last word, and it belongs to the car that, over four days and every kind of road, gave us more than mere trust: a primal confidence rarely experienced and not soon forgotten. Bravo, Bentley. Bravo.
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