//DRIVE680 PS, a four-litre V8, and still a grand tourer with flawless manners. The new Continental GT brings brute force and elegance together, experienced between a showroom in Hannover and the long road north.
It is just after eight, the Bentley showroom in Hannover is still quiet, and the Continental GT in front of me stands there like a clenched fist in a bespoke suit. 680 PS under a bonnet that gives nothing away. I get in, pull the door shut, and it closes with that deep, muffled note you cannot engineer, only earn over years.
Inside it smells of leather that was not perfumed, just genuinely good. The stitching across the dashboard runs in a line that never breaks. I lay my hand on the milled metal of the rotary control, cool, heavy, precise, and notice that this car speaks through touch long before it speaks through numbers. This is where a Bentley begins to explain itself. Not at the spec sheet. At the first contact.
I press the start button. The Continental GT rolls out of the showroom into the early Hannover morning, past facades still wrapped in haze. Plug-in hybrid, up to 84 kilometres on electricity, that is part of the deal today. But nobody buys this Bentley for the range. You buy it for what happens when the V8 joins in.
Anyone interested in a Bentley rarely walks into a dealership unprepared. The decision begins earlier: in conversation with other owners, in the search for the right model, in the question of which dealer not only delivers the car but understands it. By the time someone first pulls the door of a Continental GT shut, they have spent weeks forming a picture.
And this is exactly where a good house parts ways with a mere salesman. One that does not just hand the car over but explains why grand touring is more than power, leather and a badge on the bonnet. With Bentley that understanding is part of the product, not an extra.
Past the city limits, on the first open slip road, I let the Continental GT show its other face. The V8 joins in, and it does not do so abruptly, but like someone who knows there is nothing to prove. 680 PS of system power, 930 Newton metres, and still the force arrives linear, clean, easy to meter. The sprint to 100 takes 3.5 seconds, but the remarkable thing is not the number. What is remarkable is how undramatic it feels, how naturally this two-and-a-half-tonne Bentley disguises its weight.
The engineering behind it is serious. A 25.9 kilowatt-hour battery sits on the rear axle and, as a side effect, brings the weight distribution close to 50 to 50. Air suspension with two-valve dampers, a 48-volt anti-roll system, rear-axle steering, all as standard. In Sport mode the body drops by ten millimetres, the electric motor now works only as a boost, and the Continental GT turns in more directly than a car of this size should. The real truth about this Bentley, though, is not found in Sport mode. You find it on the long road, when it simply runs and eats kilometres as if they were metres.
Kamps represents Bentley in northern Germany, with its home in Hannover and a second location in Hamburg. This regional grounding is no footnote. For many owners the dealer is part of the feeling of ownership: the first appointment, the service, the invitation, the conversation after the test drive. A car like the Continental GT does not live off the day of purchase, but off the years that follow, and those years have an address.
Hannover sounds different from Hamburg. A new model reads differently from a well-kept pre-owned car with history. A service appointment reads differently once you have understood that value retention with Bentley is a cultural matter too, not only a technical one.
It is this transition from showroom to road that counts. Not the closing of a sale, but the moment an appointment turns into a car that is yours.
Out of the city, heading north, the roads open up and empty out. This is where the Continental GT shows what the name grand touring actually means. The V8 rumbles richly in the background, the air suspension absorbs whatever the surface offers up, and after an hour I notice I am more relaxed than when I set off. That is this car’s rare discipline: it makes long distances short without asking you to try.
A Bentley is not measured by a single number. It is measured by the moment brute force suddenly feels like the finest manners.
You could bury the Bentley in figures now. 306 km/h top speed, 2,459 kilos, Pirelli P Zero on 22 inches, an optional carbon-ceramic brake. But that would be the wrong piece. The right thought is another one: the Continental GT is built for people who love long distances and still refuse to give up force. For those who no longer separate luxury, pace and command.
On the open road none of that feels strained. The Bentley gathers up kilometres as if they cost it nothing, and it is exactly this effortlessness you miss later, the moment you sit in something smaller again.
When I get out after three hours and lay my hand on the cool metal of the rotary control once more, I understand why you do not explain a car like this through its price. You explain it through the moment 680 PS feel like a good suit: present, but never intrusive.
The numbers for that sit just below. They do not explain the Continental GT, but they show how much engineering it takes to turn raw force into something effortless.
The Continental GT brings together two things that usually rule each other out: 680 PS of brute force and the manners of a grand tourer. It can cross the city on hybrid power and break loose with the V8 seconds later without ever turning crude, and at the end of a long road you arrive rested rather than worn out. That is grand touring in its current form: raw enough to thrill, cultivated enough to keep. Anyone who wants to experience it in northern Germany goes to Kamps in Hannover or Hamburg. The car takes care of the rest.
In the German market the 2026 Continental GT S starts at around 263,600 Euro. Options such as carbon-ceramic brakes or Mulliner trim push that figure up noticeably.
The 25.9 kWh battery is good for up to 84 kilometres on electricity alone (WLTP), enough for most city runs without waking the V8.
Both share the 4.0-litre V8 plug-in hybrid. The GT S makes 680 PS, the GT Speed sits above it with 782 PS. The S is the slightly more accessible step, barely less commanding.
In the region Bentley is represented by the Kamps Group, with houses in Hannover and Hamburg. Test drives and advice run through the respective house.
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