There is a personalised Le Mans racing suit from Bentley that hangs in my wardrobe. A relic from 2014, while six months pregnant with my daughter, ignoring all reasonable pregnancy advice, I accepted an invitation to England to drive the marque’s storied Continental GT S around Crewe’s official race training track, reaching speeds of 290km/h. My unborn passenger, 12 years on, is still living loudly from the adrenaline that coursed through my veins that day.
The experience cemented my ambition to one day own a Continental GT of my own. Yet parenting continues to inflict more sedate ideas about practical modes of transport, and my dream remains unfulfilled. I cannot complain too much; my current drive, the Bentley Bentayga S, is more suited to a mother of a tween and a teen, and gets me as close to the dream as is practically possible right now.
The recent arrival of the 2026 Continental GT S into New Zealand, however, is precisely the sort of carrot this bunny is attracted to. Ignoring my parental boot-capacity obligations, I left my responsibilities at the dealership and slipped, with the ease of Cinderella into a glass slipper, into the driver’s seat. While my Bentayga is precisely right for the life I actually live, the Continental GT S belongs to the life I want to live. Perception and reality are always balancing on a tightrope.
The GT S has immediate similarities to my current Bentley SUV: all the buttons and hybrid vs sport mode, but there’s one major difference: who can argue the feeling of sitting behind the wheel of a high-performance SUV, vs a low-to-the-ground icon of British racing, purring and putt-putt-putting as it changes down gears. Accelerating with the sort of extreme, yet graceful speed from all of my past woes and foes, it feels rightfully symbolic of both my age and stage. I’m not so much a rebel on the run, more a fireball leaving one disintegrating planet and heading to find a new interstellar solar system.
What distinguishes this newest incarnation, and what nobody seems to be selling hard enough, is the hybrid engine. The new High Performance Hybrid pairs a 4.0-litre V8 with an electric motor, which means the car plugs into the garage each night like a phone, waking fully charged and ready. For a woman who quietly acknowledges she may well be entering her era of bewilderment, this is a seriously underrated virtue. Filling up on petrol is not only expensive, but it’s also likely to be as easily forgotten as the name of your dog walker.
The electric-only Bentley mode delivers a second advantage: total silence. Gliding into my garage with zero engine noise means I can arrive home undetected. Stealth, it turns out, is a surprisingly advantageous tool nobody specs for.
Sport mode is the opposite proposition entirely. It grants the V8 permission to clear its throat through the sports exhaust, and grants me permission to lean into my I-am-woman-hear-me-roar era of obnoxiousness, particularly when passing the coffee-swilling walking groups stationed outside cafes on any given workday. The guttural note renders sensible conversation inside the car temporarily irrelevant, which I consider a feature.
The numbers justify the noise. Combined, the powertrain produces 680 PS and 930 Nm of torque, dispatching 0 to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds toward a theoretical 308km/h. On an Auckland road, those figures register as an immense reserve of power, delivered without the frantic theatrics lesser cars employ to announce their speed. The GT S also feels exceptionally planted. Active all-wheel drive continually apportions power, Bentley Dynamic Ride controls body movement through corners, torque vectoring draws the car into a bend, and all-wheel steering makes a nearly five-metre-long grand tourer feel remarkably easy to position.
This particular car arrived in Cambrian Grey, a cool mid- grey lending its muscular shape a certain restraint, despite black-painted 22-inch ten swept-spoke wheels suggesting restraint was never really the point. Inside, Hotspur and Beluga hides bring rich red against black, with Piano Black veneer, contrast stitching and discreet ‘S’ emblems sharpening a cabin that also includes a panoramic glass roof, front wellness seating, Bang & Olufsen audio and the Bentley Rotating Display, still performing its parlour trick of exchanging the digital screen for three analogue gauges when one has had enough information for the day.
By the time I handed back the key, my children remained real, and my Bentayga remained sensible. Yet the GT S has turned practicality into a temporary condition. Once my rear-seat passengers can transport themselves, I intend to conduct the midlife moment properly: in Cambrian Grey, fully charged, silently arriving everywhere unannounced.
