2007 Bentley Continental GTC Test Drive

The World's Best Four-Seat Convertible?

Cars that cost substantially more than the Bentley Continental GTC have neither greater performance nor more-cosseting interiors.

Bentley has combined unstinting German support from corporate parent Volkswagen/Audi with top-drawer British craftsmanship to create a new sweet spot in the ultra-luxury market: $170,000 to $190,000 cars with such superb furnishings and performance that you have to wonder whether it makes sense to pay up to twice as much for cars of no discernibly greater value.

Like high-end audio systems where tens of thousands of dollars buy sonic improvements audible only to lab instruments, cars that cost substantially more than the Bentley Continental GTC have neither greater performance — this is, after all, a 195-mph dreadnought — nor more-cosseting interiors.

Part of Bentley’s recent success with all of its vehicles can be traced to the synergies of being a part of the huge Volkswagen/Audi empire. When the German company acquired Bentley in 1998, it injected an enormous amount of capital into the then-ailing British brand to update aging manufacturing facilities. It also offered access to suppliers that otherwise would laugh at Bentley’s tiny orders for handfuls of parts.

Though Bentley is now German-owned and unashamedly uses some German internal systems, the cars are entirely crafted, assembled, trimmed, painted and finished in Crewe, England, exactly where Bentleys were built for more than half a century before the VW acquisition. And nobody does automotive cabinetry, leather work and specialty fabrication better than the British.

The Continental GT coupe that preceded this convertible has been so popular that some claim it has become “too common.” That may be true on a very few acres of Hollywood and the Hamptons, but it hardly impacts the rest of the country, where Continental GTs will continue to constitute just 0.00016 percent of all cars sold in the U. S.