That noise. It’s totally incongruous with the coupe that flashes past doing well over the double-ton. The thunderous avalanche of decibels simply can’t be spewing out of the tailpipes of a Bentley. There’s nothing muted or restrained about it… It’s angry, ballsy and full of venom.
I’m standing in pitlane at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi and the white projectile with green swoosh stripes that’s generating this aural assault rockets past again. Quite clearly, the Continental GT3-R is cut from a very different bolt of cloth than the rest of the fast but genteel Bentley line-up.
Deriving its inspiration from the GT3 race car that will set the Bathurst 12-Hour field on its haunches next week’s and is enjoying healthy success in the FIA Blancpain series, the GT3-R is a discernibly harder-edged weapon than its stablemates, so much so that a Conti V8S feels like a weak-kneed, roly-poly blancmange by comparison. More on this later.
Just 300 examples of the GT3-R will be rolled out globally by Bentley, with Australian pricing set at a mere snip -- $669,000 (plus on-road costs).
The good news for me is that I’m about to strap into the GT3-R. The bad news is that I’ll be in the passenger seat, albeit alongside a highly capable steerer the Bentley boys have brought along to dish out high-speed taxi rides. The PR bods’ reasoning goes something like this: “We have only one car, and it has to travel around the world for demos, so we have to protect it”. (Ed: clearly they've seen Gautam in action)...
Once clear of pitlane, driver Peter Barnes stands on the gas and the GT3-R accelerates with surprising vigour. Although it’s propelled by essentially the same 4.0-litre twin-turbo engine as the V8S, remapped engine software and an increase in boost pressure ramp up power and torque to 427kW and 700Nm (compared to 389kW and 680Nm for the V8S).
This in itself isn’t worth shouting about, but when you factor in that the GT3-R tips the scales 100kg lighter than the V8S (still weighty 2195kg), and that its eight-speed auto runs shorter gearing, the result is a pretty lively package. Bentley quotes a 0-100km/h time of 3.8sec, and from where I sit that sounds eminently plausible.
The only drawback of the shorter gearing is that top speed is reduced to just 275km/h, where the V8S will do 310.
Does this really matter? I think not, unless you’re on a racetrack with a mega straight, or you happen to have access to unrestricted stretches of autobahn.
As for the GT3-R’s barking-mad sonic signature (which sounds just as tasty from inside the car), that’s the result of a bespoke titanium exhaust system that weighs 7kg less than the standard pipes.
The straight-line grunt and musical accompaniment is an eye-opener, but much more so is how flat the GT3-R sits through corners -- particularly for a 2.2-tonne heavyweight. How effectively it hooks up to the tarmac and converts those 700Nm into forward motion is also instructive.
The keys here are much firmer suspension tuning, a torque-vectoring system and a recalibrated stability-control safety net that also allows for more sideways tomfoolery than the standard set-up.
The 420mm carbon ceramic front discs (and 356mm rears) also haul the car up with urgency, but need to be cooled off on the second lap after the pounding they receive on our out lap.
The cool-off lap gives me time to gather my thoughts, and the gist of what I’m thinking is: “This is pretty damn impressive for a car that’s essentially a big comfy grand tourer with all the trimmings.”
With a Lambo or Ferrari, you expect to go fast on a track (by road car standards). That’s what they’re designed to do. Bentleys are not. And just to reinforce this point, I take out a V8S onto the circuit immediately after and it feels a world apart – soft, wallowy and short on grip. It’s hard to believe the GT3-R is 90 per cent the same car underneath.
While the GT3-R has a strong visual link to Bentley’s GT3 race car with its bonnet vents, go-faster stripes, glacier white paintwork, gloss-black 21-inch rims, carbonfibre diffuser and rear wing, that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. The stripped-out Bathurst racer weighs just 2195kg and sends all its power to the rear wheels only via an Xtrac six-speed sequential gearbox.
It hardly matters. The GT3-R is plenty hard enough to entertain even the most serious of punters, and few of the well-heeled customers who buy one are likely to feel short-changed, especially once they’ve slid their derrieres into the opulent Alcantara/leather-lined cabin.
Bentley Continental GT3-R pricing and specifications:
Price: from $669,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Output: 427kW/700Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 12.7L/100km (NEDC Combined)
CO2: N/A
Safety rating: N/A