Bentley Continental vs Maserati Granturismo

What's the difference?

Any fears Bentley was heading in the wrong direction by abandoning 12 cylinders for hybridisation (not that it had a lot of choice) should be totally salved by the Continental GT Speed. It is a hugely capable, fabulously luxurious and beautiful to behold grand tourer that deserves extra points for not being an SUV. It might just be the supercar you could drive every day, with no complaints.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

There’s a famous line in a Hollywood movie that somebody’s ego is writing cheques their body can’t cash.

In the GranTurismo’s case, its agility, performance, ride, handling and overall refinement means it absolutely delivers on the promise of the stunning styling.

Of course, this review is a first taster only, even if it is on one of the most challenging race circuits we know. And, as such, we cannot wait to finally drive the GranTurismo outside on Australian public roads.

Which, by the way, will be all the more beautiful because of it.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much interesting waffle about the design of any car, ever, but before we get to the wild, and wildlife, justifications for how it looks, just feast your eyes on it. 

Now, not everyone might love it, but it’s hard to imagine a huge, super coupe looking any better than this thing does. It’s no Ferrari, sure, but realistically it doesn’t have to compete with that, because it’s a cruiser as well as a bruiser, a supercar you can be quiet and comfortable in. A Rolls-Royce with rocket engines, even. 

The most obvious change, of course, is that Bentleys have had four headlights, or four eyes if you like, for so long that seeing this new one with two is a major shock, a big shift, but somehow it works.

The proportions, the elegance, the bold 'be big and bold and give no damns what anyone thinks', it’s just impressive, and the interior reflects that same, luxury ethos.

Apparently the new-look Continental is built on three design principles, the first of which is, amusingly, 'Resting Beast'. This is supposed to reflect how the Bentley looks from side on; like a tiger, stalking its prey, or perhaps resting and thinking about its prey. It’s all muscles and strength and power, but also elegance. And who doesn’t imagine tigers walking red carpets in ball gowns?

Principle two is 'Upright Elegance', and here you’re supposed to see, in the car, the strong vertical line one finds in the chest of a thoroughbred horse when it’s standing in particularly powerful way. Great. Love it.

And finally, there is the 'Endless Bonnet', which is a horizontal line that goes from the front of the car - via the bonnet obviously - and all the way to there rear, via cat-like haunches, providing an impression of “speed, even when standing still”.

Those are the bold strokes, but it’s all the little details that make it sing, like the beautiful jewellery-like look of the headlights, which are meant to resemble a tiger’s eyes. So many cats, is it any wonder I started thinking of the Bentley as a very, very flashy Jaguar?

It’s important to note that while it looks very new - and 68 per cent of the Continental’s parts are new - the body panels are carried over, while the front and rear are all new. This is one very effective mid-life facelift, with a heart transplant, then.

With a long bonnet and centralised, cab-backward silhouette, the new GranTurismo is built on a highly-modified version of the Stellantis Group’s Giorgio platform, which debuted with the BMW 3 Series-sized Alfa Romeo Giulia sedan back in 2016 and also underpins the Stelvio SUV. 

In this application, it has been redesigned as a modular architecture to accommodate, among other things, electrification. The resulting Folgore (Lightning) electric vehicle version will arrive in Australia during 2025.

Compared to before, the design is all-new, with a body that is slightly longer and wider than before; it features over 65 per cent aluminium, weight distribution is 52/48 per cent up front/rear, and the aerodynamics are honed to maximise efficiency, especially for the Folgore. The latter’s drag coefficiency of 0.26 – 0.02 better than the Modena/Trofeo.

Here are the key dimensions: 4959mm long (+78mm), 1957mm wide (+42mm), 1353mm tall (same as before) and 2929mm wheelbase (-20mm).

Maserati claims it invented the grand tourer with its post-war A6 1500 coupe of 1947. Since then, a variety of timeless designs have been released, with beauty always being the priority… and the GranTurismo nails it.

So a two-door, '2+2' grand tourer isn’t entirely built with the term 'practicality' in mind and it could be argued the existence of this Bentley Continental, the fourth generation, is something of a surprise, when you consider most people just buy SUVs and Bentley has done quite well with its Bentayga (which will, in future, share the same engine used here).

But for what it is, a two-seat car with occasional seating in the rear for emergencies, or very small children, it feels entirely fit for purpose.

An actual human can sit in the back, but it does feel a bit claustrophobic, and you’d be so jealous of how comfortable the people are in the front.

The 20-way adjustable front pews feel like grand armchairs for grand touring, fabulously comfortable - although you can slide across them a bit when driving on a race track, not a common problem - and plush to the touch.

They now come with a 'Wellness Facility' that brings postural, massage and climate functions to help with fatigue on long journeys - and epic blasts across multiple European countries is clearly what this thing is designed for.

In general, the cabin is just lovely, Bentley claims it does the best car interiors in the world and while Rolls might argue, it’s a pretty fair statement.

The spinning central 12.3-inch display remains the highlight, offering you a modern touchscreen, which can disappear to reveal either three classic analogue dials or a plain piece of dashboard, if you prefer a 'digital detox'.

Long, low and wide. These are prerequisite proportions for a traditional grand touring 2+2 coupe, and with them come traditional packaging compromises.

With a near 3.0-metre wheelbase, there’s tonnes of room for legs, shoulders and even heads if you’re willing to sit nice and low, though the lush ambience is more cosy than coastal because of the accompanying broad centre console.

The dual central screens look like an open tablet, and it’s perfectly sized and easy to use. Same goes for much of the controls, while the driving position is, thankfully, first class. Just like the fit and finish.

Beating Mitsubishi’s TR Magna to the punch by decades, there’s an analogue clock perched above the centre vent outlets, which is digitalised and contains performance telemetry as per Porsche’s equivalent.

Vision is a little limited by the fat pillars and upswept window line but the big screens help. Storage is okay, and access to the rear is only for the very young, very fit or very limber.

Two more seats out back provide snug comfort, but the GranTurismo really is all about the ones up front. Overall, the cabin design’s restrained modernity matches the exterior’s styling philosophy down to a tee.

Further back, the boot lid opens electrically because why not, revealing 310 litres of cargo space. The rear seat doesn’t fold, but there is a ski-hatch into the cabin for broomsticks and some such.

Speaking of flying high, let’s take a look at the other side of the GranTurismo.

Beauty like this does not come cheap. What Italian supercar does?

The Modena is the base grade, kicking off from an Australian luxury-tax addled $375,000, before on-road costs, while there’s also the top-of-the-line Trofeo, from $450,000.

This puts the GranTurismo smack-bang in the middle of several other high-end 2+2 sports coupes besides the 911 and Conti GT, such as the Aston Martin Vantage, BMW M8 Competition and Mercedes-AMG GT.

Clearly, privilege brings the luxury of variety.

Now, as you’d probably expect, the GranTurismo is a pretty lavishly presented and equipped proposition.

Yet it’s the sheer modernity of the Torinese icon that might catch you by surprise – until you learn there’s also a cutting-edge and completely electric Folgore version also coming to Australia sometime mid-next year.

There’s a sense of that thinking with a pair of sizeable digital display screens – one ahead of the driver and a 12.3-inch touchscreen to the centre, sat above a smaller, 8.8-inch climate control display like an open tablet.

You’ll also find sumptuous leather, a 360-degree camera view, a head-up display, a digital rear-view mirror, high-end premium audio with 14 speakers and an Android-based multimedia set-up offering Alexa assistance, ‘Hey, Maserati’ voice-control and even a Wi-Fi hotspot.

It’s the repurposing of the traditional analogue clock perched up on top of the dash as both an analogue-look timepiece and performance telemetry screen that best juxtaposes the classic with the contemporary.

That, and the long list of adaptive driver-assist safety systems, which will be spelled out in more detail in the safety section below, as well as the standard air suspension and adaptive dampers. All underline the GranTurismo’s security, luxury and comfort yang to its supercar-performance yin.

Still, regardless of how many more features or more performance the Maserati’s competitors may have over it, the GranTurismo possesses one luxury no other quite manages as naturally and that’s supermodel looks.

There is some sadness that the world’s biggest producer and promoter of 12-cylinder engines has cut production of them altogether - the epic W12 is no more - and this does feel, on a smaller scale, like Porsche ditching flat-six engines forever.

Previous hybrid efforts from Bentley, including a V6-based one that the company now admits was a bit limp wristed, might cause some concern when you hear that Bentley will, henceforth, make just one engine for all its cars, and that it is a hybrid, albeit one attached to a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8.

But then they point out the version in this Continental GT Speed’s is “the most powerful Bentley engine ever” and that sounds pretty good.

The engine alone makes 441kW and 800Nm, which almost sounds ample, but the addition of the electric E-motor is good for another 140kW and 450Nm, with the aid of a 29.5kWh battery, which somehow adds up to a combined output of 575kW and a nice, round, and impressive 1000Nm of torque.

All that power does have to move 2.5 tonnes of precious metal, which sounds like an ask, but is effortless in practice - hurling the Speed to 100km/h in a properly supercar-like 3.2 seconds on its way to a top speed of 335km/h.

Yes, vitally, it sounds pretty damn impressive when all the power sources are going at once, it even barks and pops on the overrun, a bit like the Porsche Panamera with which it shares the hybrid set-up, only a bit bossier, and perhaps classier.

The point of the hybrid feels like it’s mostly about performance and excitement, but it has a practical side, too, because in EV-only mode this giant Bentley can drive for up to 81km in pure, and slightly inappropriate-feeling, silence (at speeds of up to 140km/h).

Handy if you live in global cities with zero-emission zones, or if you want your neighbours to think you care about the climate.

One brilliant thing about this plug-in hybrid is it’s set up to use the engine to regen the battery, hard, in 'Sport' mode, so the more fun you have, the quicker the battery charges. So much so that, realistically, you might never need to plug it in at all (Bentley recently ran the car at a race track for two weeks and never needed to top it up via cable once).

It is an impressive, sonorous and enjoyable power plant, and you’d expect nothing less from Porsche, although Bentley says it’s done lots of work on the donor engine to make it uniquely more wonderful.

So, no more Ferrari-sourced V8, eh?

Yet, it’s not just a sexy body that Maserati has mastered, because this particular 2992cc 3.0L twin-turbo V6 is pretty-much exactly the same engine as you’ll find in the company’s MC20 supercar, give or take a bunch of outputs.

Called the Nettuno, it isn’t quite in the performance league of the GT’s mid-engined two-seater sibling, but with 365kW of power and 600Nm of torque in the Modena and 45kW/50Nm more in the Trofeo, it’s a spine-tingling symphony of speed and total jailbait… especially given the latter’s 320km/h maximum velocity.

That’s 18km/h quicker than the standard tune, and the Trofeo also shaves 0.4 seconds off the 0-100km/h sprint time at just 3.5s flat.

Either engine, though, feels terrifically quick and smooth and no doubt that’s aided by what must be one of the world’s greatest automatic transmissions in the eight-speed ZF unit. It sends drive to all four wheels.

Given the length, girth and opulence, a kerb weight of just 1795kg is outstanding, allowing a power-to-weight ratio of 203kW per tonne in the Modena and a knockout 228kW/tonne in the Trofeo.

To help keep all that in check, the GranTurismo also deploys double wishbones up front, a multi-link independent rear suspension set-up, along with the aforementioned air suspension – which is a nice nod to history as French carmaker Citroen used to own Maserati.

Anyway, the active suspension works in tandem with the four self-explanatory driving models fitted – 'Comfort', the default 'GT', 'Sport' and 'Corsa' (track).

While the top-line figures for performance hybrids like this always sound impressive, it’s hard to believe anyone will ever get near them in the real world, because the temptation to drive a car like this hard and fast, as its makers clearly intended, will mean chewing fuel in a very non-efficient way indeed.

On paper, though, where it matters in terms of being allowed to sell your giant luxury grand tourer in Europe, the Bentley Continental GT Speed produces just 29 grams of CO2 per kilometre. 

Fuel economy is a claimed 10.3 litres per 100km, which is optimistic, but still a lot lower than the equally unlikely 14L/100km figure for the old (12-cylinders and no hybrid) car. As in, neither car would ever achieve the theoretical figure, but at least the new one is clearly a lot better.

You know, for a super coupe that can easily exceed 300km/h, the GranTurismo is pleasingly efficient, with a combined cycle average figure of 10.2L/100km.

Top that 70L tank with premium unleaded petrol, and you might even average over 680km between refills if you can restrain yourself from poking the bear under the bonnet.

How? Clean aero efficiency, along with that predominantly aluminium body that helps keep the weight down to under an impressive 1.8 tonnes.

Which all bodes really well for 2025’s Folgore EV version, which can also hit 100 in 2.7s on the way to 325km/h. Bring that on!

In an ideal world, one would take the Bentley Continental GT Speed for an appropriate drive from the top of Germany to the bottom of Italy or France, but instead we were asked to drive the big beast around a tight and slightly terrifying private members race track outside Tokyo called the Magarigawa Club.

Members here pay US$1 million a year for access to this circuit, carved out of several mountain tops, which features two long and fun straights attached to what feels like a hill climb circuit with a bit of Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew and a touch of Mt Panorama’s undulations.

This track, with its daunting lack of run-off, should have been an intimidating and possibly inappropriate place to try the Continental GT Speed, but it is a credit to the car’s “everyday supercar” personality that it soaked up the pressure, and pace with ease.

On our first lap we were encouraged to drive in EV mode, which was predictably a bit dull, quiet and not-quite boring, because if you went past 75 per cent of throttle, or 140km/h, the engine would kick in and things would instantly get interesting.

It was a good chance to note just how lushly comfortable the cabin and seats are, however, and just how supple the suspension can be.

The Bentley’s “secret weapon”, according to its engineers, is a new twin-valve damper the allows the chassis to behave like a sports car when you want it to - probably about 3.0 per cent of the time for actual owners - and an absolute luxury pleasure palace for cruising around the rest of the time.

The split personality thing really is on offer with this car, as we found out once we engaged the Sport setting.

The Speed’s all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, torque vectoring and electronic LSD were all on display over the later laps, in which we were allowed to blast past 200km/h and find out just how good the brakes are at pulling up 2.5 tonnes of high-speed luxo-barge.

You do your steering via a lovely wheel with a leather front and Alcantara wheel, and it feels effortless, even in full track attack mode. A bit more feedback might be nice, but I guess Bentley owners have other cars for that kind of thing.

Aside from the rushing, roaring speed, what is most impressive is how little body roll there is from the Continental. It feels planted, poised, happy to change direction and is rarely upset or flustered, despite some squeals of complaints from the tyres. 

Getting too wide on to the ripple strips caused a shudder and a skip sideways now and then, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been so far off the racing line.

Overall, the Continental GT delivers on its name, with Speed, and lots of it, all delivered in a properly swanky environment.

Though it has been modified by what may be an almost unrecognisable amount by Maserati’s engineers, using Stellantis’ Gorgio architecture that first appeared in the magnetic Alfa Romeo Giulia of 2016 and then utterly seduced in the flagship Quadrifoglio version is a great place to start.

Now, we’ve only tested the all-new GranTurismo (GT from here on in) coupe around the fast and challenging Tailem Bend race track near Adelaide, so cannot speak of its behaviour on Australian public roads.

But what we experienced was an incredible and elevating sports car experience. And, yes, that's despite the loss of the magnetic Ferrari-based 4.7-litre V8.

Even with ‘just’ 365kW of power and 600Nm of torque, the base Modena twin-turbo V6 thunders off the line, its superb ZF eight-speed automatic transmission, surely the best of its type in the world, shifting with lightning speed through the ratios as it blitzed past 100, then 150, then 200km/h in mere seconds. Maserati says within 8.8s, in fact.

To help keep all that in check, the GranTurismo deploys double wishbones up front, a multi-link independent rear suspension set-up, along with the aforementioned air suspension – which is a nice nod to history as French carmaker Citroen used to own Maserati.

Anyway, the active suspension works in tandem with the four self-explanatory driving models fitted – 'Comfort', the default 'GT', 'Sport' and 'Corsa' (track).

We were too thrilled to notice whether the loss of the Maserati V8 grumble, because the exhaust howl was exciting enough, along with the sheer ease in which the GT accelerates.

And when we needed to suddenly brake reaching corners that seemed stupidly close until we realised they weren’t, we also were relieved at the Modena’s marvellously effective Brembo brake package.

Now, at under 1900kg, the GT is still a heavy car, but not for a five-by-two metre-long-and-wide 2+2 seater coupe.

Seriously, the cohesion and crispness of the steering, whether in Comfort or three-settings down in shockingly heavier Corsa mode, tingles the senses, seeming far lighter and more agile than the (albeit lithe) luxury coupe styling suggests.

Not Porsche 911 supernatural-alacrity, but beautifully quick and reactive nonetheless. It’s such a buzz.

There’s also a sense of isolation from the air suspension underneath, aided by the trick adaptive dampers doing their bit too to cushion the ride. The vital luxury part of the GT equation is omnipresent in the Maserati coupe.

And this was all just in the Modena. Another few laps in the Trofeo just sharpened the senses and speed and responses, supercharging the experience around Tailem Bend.

What all this left us is a longing for more time behind the wheel. Which hopefully will happen soon, but for now, this is far-and-away the best Maserati I have ever driven. If you can afford one, this is all great news.

Of course, back in the real world on everyday roads, there will surely be criticisms, but for now, around the circuit, the GranTurismo is something very special indeed.

It might shock to learn that supercars like this generally are not crash-tested by EuroNCAP or other such agencies, so there’s no rating.

But most of today’s advanced driver-assist tech is present and active in the GranTurismo along with a super-strong body, massive Brembo brakes and that trick air suspension to help keep everything grounded.

The 'Level 2' tech includes front and rear AEB, blind-spot warning, lane support systems with alerts and intervention, rear cross-traffic alert, driver attention alert and auto high beams. Front, side and rear cameras are also fitted.

Plus, there are six airbags (dual front, dual side and curtain for both rows), along with anti-lock brakes, brake assist, electronic brake-force distribution, electronic stability control, traction control and front/rear parking sensors.

Two ISOFIX restraints and child-seat anchorage points are integrated into the rear pair of seats.

The Bentley Continental GT Speed comes with a five-year, all-inclusive servicing plan as standard.

That sounds good, but stunningly, Bentley still only offers a three-year manufacturer warranty, albeit one with no mileage limitations. That's way below industry standard these days.

The battery that forms part of the hybrid system is, however, warrantied for eight years, or 160,000km.

Maserati offers a frankly disappointing three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty, which is on the stingier side of things.

Service intervals are also every 12 months or 10,000km.

There is no capped-price servicing, but Maserati offers a pre-paid maintenance program that covers all the inspections and components and consumable replacements.

As the pricing was not finalised at the time of publishing, best to check the company’s website for the latest details.