I remember reading in a magazine as a kid that the actor Edward G Robinson had bought some painting and every night he would come home and sit and stare at it.

I thought that was a bit odd — I mean, how long can you stare at a stupid painting before you end up pulling your hair out? But now I’ve discovered that it’s exactly the same with the Bentley Continental GT, which has just arrived in America.

You could put it in your garage, take a chair and go sit and look at it, and you’d be happy. And as you stared at it, a bit like Edward G staring at his painting all those years ago, you would no doubt start to see different things in it. You’d certainly begin to see the influence of other, older Bentleys appearing in its fabulous lines.

The rear end tends to look like the Continental R that was made from 1991 to 2003. It is a big, manly car, and a heavy one at that. It has a lot of the traditional Bentley visual aspects about it, but of course presented in an updated fashion.

But to be honest, I was more than ready to not like this car at all. Being something of a traditionalist, my belief was that the only “real” Bentleys were those made between 1919 and 1931, the ones built by Walter Owen (usually known as WO) Bentley before the company he started was absorbed into Rolls-Royce.

In my garage there stands an 8 litre Mulliner four-door from 1931, and alongside it a 1924 3 litre chassis with an 8 litre engine with twin turbos grafted to it. Then there’s also a Speed Six, and a 4 litre Bentley chassis carrying an 8 litre Bentley engine. I also have a Bentley Turbo R — the first US-legal model.

With the exception of the R, those cars are all pre-1931 models — the Bentleys that, as far as I’m concerned, made the legend. From 1931 until VW’s quite recent takeover, Bentley was the mere stepchild of Rolls-Royce.

However, the Continental GT is a Bentley that’s much closer to the mould of the WO Bentleys. Since it was unveiled there have been a lot of comparisons made with the Bentleys of old. But the mistake many motor magazines have made is to picture the new car alongside the 1929 Blower Bentley — the 4½ litre that was primarily designed for use at Le Mans. That isn’t what the GT is intended to be, though, as it’s not a race car.

It has much more in common with the 8 litre Bentley, the one I have — the 1931 version that was built to take on Rolls-Royce. It was meant to be a full-on luxury car but was also as fast as any car of the period.

I mean, even today I get on the freeway with it and drive at 75-80mph — I pass almost everybody. It’s one of the few cars of that era in which you don’t have to keep repeating, “sorry, sorry ” — you’re not having to apologise constantly for slowing people down.

In fact it behaves very much like a modern car, so people assume I have put a newer engine into it, although I can assure them that it’s the original straight-six with single overhead cam and four valves per cylinder.

If you believe that a Bentley is a gentleman’s car, then the new Continental GT seems to live up to the tradition. But WO Bentley was an engineer first and foremost, and the GT is also quite clearly an engineer’s car. You can tell that from various of its attributes, one of them being the way in which its steering is so very nicely weighted. It is a big improvement over previous models such as the Arnage.

This is a clean sheet of paper, a ground-up design. It has a brand new chassis, and if it’s meant to pay homage to Bentley cars of the past then I think it does it pretty well. It is a thoroughly modern car but still manages to keep enough of that English drawing-room ambience about it.

And I’m amazed at how much ground you can cover in it without even realising you’re doing so. I was looking at the speedometer just the other day and saw the number 115; well, I just assumed it was reading in kilometres . . . but I was wrong.

The GT puts out a massive 552bhp. But whatever a car produces, it’s never really going to be enough, is it? Make no mistake: the weight of this car makes itself known for most of the time; there’s nearly 2½ tons of it.

If you drive it at normal speeds it’s just fine, but if you get up to really high speeds when you’re going into corners you’ll find yourself shouting out “whooaagh”. It’s a little like square dancing with a great big fat woman. But the fact that it does it at all is remarkable in itself; you think, “Oh my God, this is amazing stuff for such a big, heavy car.”

The only thing that really annoyed me when I was behind the Bentley’s steering wheel was the temperature gauge. At 140F the needle points straight up, but the engine never actually runs at 140, it runs at 200F, so as you drive you look down and can’t help but go “aaargh”. Because as someone who drives old cars, I always assume that if the gauges aren’t pointing straight up I have to suspect there’s something bad going on.

I would also prefer a two-wheel-drive version to the four-wheel drive. This would lose it a few pounds in weight, as it wouldn’t need all those extra halfshafts hanging around. The paddle-shift gearchanges don’t do anything for me either, because the transmission’s fully automatic mode definitely does the job of changing gear better.

It’s a GT car, a go-anywhere machine. It’s a wonderful vehicle to drive up Highway 1 here in California; but as I was driving it over here the other day I was also thinking that if I lived in Britain and it was pouring with rain, it would still be a thoroughly pleasant place to be.

I enjoy driving in the rain, you see.



I like the fact that you look outside and it’s all sort of dingy and drab, then you look inside — where you’re sitting — and all is peaceful, cosy and pleasant around you. It’s like being in your library at home, gazing out of the window.

I’d really like to try this car in inclement weather just to see how it handles — especially with the four-wheel drive.

As I said, the GT has only just come out here in America, and I haven’t yet met anyone who has one. I’ve had the car for only three or four days and already a number of people have been saying “Oh my God” . . . you know, even people who couldn’t normally care less about motoring.

My wife, for example, is not a big car person, but even she was like, “Wow . . . which one is this?” She was really quite taken by it, even though she sees a million cars and for the most part doesn’t remark on them at all.

Even the Porsche Carrera GT didn’t manage to impress her — all she had to say was: “It’s a little low on the ground, isn’t it?” For this one, though, you don’t have to make any excuses.

Living in Hollywood I’m surrounded by people who love cars, and just as many who don’t like them and understand nothing about them. But a number of stars have commented on this Bentley. I had a couple of bands in on the show last week and they really liked it.

I guess the key to this automobile is that it’s a grown-up version of a very cool car. If you drive a Lamborghini Diablo women tend to look at you and think: “How old does he think he is . . . what exactly is his problem?” But you really don’t ever have to apologise for this car.

It probably has one of the most successful new-car interiors I have seen for some while. I barely played the radio, instead just enjoyed the ambience and the particularly nice exhaust — although it could be a bit louder for my liking. I like the push-pull switches and the car is just the right side of being electronically annoying.

BMW’s iDrive system (the all-in-one multifunction information and control system commanded by one button) is a definite deal-breaker as far as I’m concerned. I like the Z8 — that’s my favourite BMW model — but I really can’t stand iDrive in principle. I mean, I have computers at home and if I feel that I want to go play with them I can do just that. But I definitely don’t want to go sit in my car to do it. The Continental GT, by contrast, is a far nicer blend of technology and straightforwardness: there’s only enough electronics in there to get the job done. I think VW have done a wonderful job — there is a German standard of fit and finish.

And yet it still feels British, but British in the way an American car is American — at the back of your mind you know that the axles are made in Brazil. Everything is blending together now. The Germans own Bentley but the cars are still assembled in Britain. I guess it’s really about as British as you can hope to get nowadays, perhaps with the exception of a Morgan. So this car is a bit like a German guy marrying a British woman. I mean what are the kids? The royal family? To be honest, I’m glad I only have the Bentley for one week, because if I had it for any longer I would probably end up buying one. And then I would have to lie to the wife.

“New? Heavens, no, dear! You must remember this car from before — it’s that green one you said you liked so much.”

Without a doubt the Bentley Continental GT is a car that grows and grows on you. The more hours you spend driving it, the more you end up bonding with it — even if that was never your intention. And I can tell you that this doesn’t happen very often with modern cars.



I would say that it’s a car WO Bentley would firmly give his blessing to.







Jay Leno presents The Tonight Show on NBC — one of America’s most watched programmes — and is also one of the world’s leading car collectors. Jeremy Clarkson will return next week