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[Music] for Generations Bentley has ruled the world of luxury saloons by being bigger faster  and louder than the competition it’s beautiful it’s luxurious it’s fast it’s expensive that’s  rarefied air for over a decade the Continental GT has been the Brand’s signature machine Â
Once it was the fastest 4C production car in the world hitting a top speed of 318 kilometers an  hour combining competition level performance with luxury worthy of royalty the proudest  achievement was producing a car for the Queen of England in the same year as winning them all Â
However the platform has aged cars had an extremely long chocolate It’s featured  competitors are nipping at the company’s heels the world is catching up quickly if Bentley doesn’t  keep innovating then they’ll have a problem the Brand’s answer isn’t to reinvent an icon but Â
To refine it creating their most powerful and fuel efficient machine ever Continental GT V8s [Music] thank you foreign [Music] GT V8s is the latest Bentley to wear a red flying B a subtle Insignia that hides in plain sight but Â
The Red Badge means only one thing speed with 521 horsepower on tap the GT V8s is the most powerful  entry-level variant a machine that’s over a decade old in 2003 the Continental GT emerged  as the Ultimate dual threat supercar exuding high-end luxury and total performance it was Â
A real bold move to decide to go for a luxury Coupe for the brand to set up the start of the  brand and the reset the Bentley 2.0 phase of the brand Bentley came into this segment there  was really nothing that competed against Continental GT it sort of opened up a new Â
Segment up there between 150 and 200 000 that ruled for many many years single-handedly the  GT resuscitates the Grand Touring genre it was about creating a really special group two plus  two seater which was combining performance and incredible Driving Experience [Applause]
It was really coming together at Two Worlds the blending of the luxury world performance world there’s a real breakthrough car for us almost overnight the machine becomes an automotive icon  when it entered the market in 2003 it changed the perception of the whole brand completely
Part supercar Super Saloon the machine quickly increases sales fivefold the change was dramatic  from where it was producing just around 2 000 cars per annums to reducing just over  10 000 cars Continental was a play for volume by Bentley this was a car that was more affordable Â
And also an everyday livable car GT’s success traces its roots back to a formula that’s nearly  a hundred years old that special combination of the performance luxury and practicality  that’s what makes that bendy GT to an icon a mantra where bigger is always better it’s an Â
Ideology that Harkens back to w o Bentley the man who founds the company in 1919 W.O Bentley  created relatively big cars he was of the opinion that if the car is not fast enough I have to put Â
A bigger engine in when the brand reboots in 2003 the team doesn’t start with the engine but rather the shape of the car itself it started with a blank sheet of paper  Believe It or Not The Styling of the car certainly dictated quite a small engine Â
Bay so we had to come up with an engine that would package in that tight engine  bay and produce the power and torque that one would expect from a Bentley kitchen concerns lead the team to create a unique
The W12 is an interesting engine and it’s its layout is not really shared by anything else the  W12 is two VR6 engines which are staggered when you combine two of them is four rows of cylinder Â
Space that’s the W12 but age has a way of catching up with beauty no matter how powerful it is it’s not a particularly efficient design it doesn’t fit into the mold in the way that  some smaller lines do because it doesn’t get the greatest fuel economy the once emboldened Â
Continental is now on borrowed time when we entered the market with a Continental GT it  was unique today there are probably 10 or 20 competitors younger lighter and nimbler  Challengers have started to steal its Thunder for years Rolls-Royce was the Brand’s main rival but Â
Now a variety of marks have Bentley in their crosshairs so there’s no time for us to sit  still the high-end Posh society that the original machine targeted has changed consumers can be very  fickle after a while if something stops being cool they’re going to move on to the next thing Â
Rising fuel costs have also challenged the very foundation of the brand they’re in a  very difficult position that they’ve been very successful in this car and there’s  a lot of people who want this car the way it is but they still also have to keep it modern Â
In order to remain at the top of the GT category Bentley has to do two contradictory things at the  same time increase power and slim its Flagship down families have never been lightweight they’ve  never been small cars they weigh as much as a lot of SUVs but they make up for that with Â
A lot of power reworking the Bentley archetype is no small feat for a brand like Bentley very  important to understand how to transfer this Rich history into today now it’s up to Luke donkevolk  head of design to bring the classic Conti shape into the Modern Age it’s an industrial Â
Process relying on artistic communication language which is the drawing [Music]  to get modern the team goes back in time they start the new model’s revision by sketching  lines on paper it’s really important is whether we call the the power line and the hounds those Â
Two lines are the DNA of the brand and they are really present in different orchestration the  Brand’s strong history is a blessing and a curse if we don’t want to make a retro car but we want Â
To Anchor it in the past in the traditions of the company designers labor to push the edge this wow  effect you get when you see that car first time is coming from The Styling tradition takes a  dramatic sidestep towards new tech inside the Bentley visualization Suite a state-of-the-art Â
Facility where a simple sketch on a napkin can become a life-sized three-dimensional model exterior designer Gareth Thomas is tasked with tweaking the car’s classic lines once we’ve  developed the the sketch we’ll work with the cad modelers and that’s where the exciting bit begins Â
Really his team sculpts the Next Generation Bentley using Next Generation technology  you can see the cad one-to-one scale of the Continental GT within this virtual photorealistic  environment Parts can be tested for both look and functionality it’s really important that what we Â
Are designing isn’t just fantasy the cad data is is a really important crucial part of of the  design process it’s from this CAD data that the actual parts are manufactured designers can test  each particular piece for size shape and surface quality it’s like a video game for creativity
The new headlamps become one of the key parts to move the machine into the modern  era the challenge is always how to do this on a modern interpretation and to  to keep the design fresh the development of LED technology is certainly allowing us to do that Â
The LED lights and glass covers are created with a click of the mouse beyond the face virtually refined as well [Music] the reflections is  how you read the surfaces of the car itself Reflections are key to all great supercars
Bentley’s sense of time is based on a classical philosophy the shape is orchestrated by those  really sharp and precise lines there’s a riddance like in morecaster where you have  one instrument after the other so you have the violin stopping and then you have to you know Â
The other instrument that is basically starting picking up in in a room this is  orchestrated by volumes by concave and convex surfaces which gives this richness of the form by utilizing the latest technology designers have modified the classic look of a Bentley
Nearly a hundred years ago in the British town of cricklewood in Northwest London Railway engineer  makes a fateful decision to build engine parts out of aluminum instead of cast iron his name w  o Bentley a man notorious for building the biggest engines around and the most efficient wo Bentley Â
In 1919 wasn’t all about just big cubic capacity he was all about technology and efficiency  wo’s early engines offer cutting-edge technology his power plants feature overhead cams and twin  carburetors it was more about talk rather than big displacement wo’s genius starts with engineering Â
But it crosses the finish line thanks to promotion he realizes it isn’t the power of His Pistons that  attracts buyers or whether or not they win on the racetrack in the late 20s a group of Rich breads  called the Bentley boys would take their giant imposing massive Bentleys to the 24-hour Lamar Â
Race in France and race their cars and party and it was a whole lifestyle thing and they would win five Le Mans victories later Bentley Motors is world renowned for hand  for handling luxurious high-performance machines that win in 2003 Bentley introduces the reborn Continental with a new W12 power plant Â
It wins critical Acclaim but time moves fast even faster than a continental what was once deemed an exceptional piece of engineering  now a liability the Continental had always been built on the W12 but  obviously with fuel efficiency and regulations we needed to downsize
Brian gosh the current director of Motorsport is one of the key engineering members tasked with  finding a more environmentally friendly solution we had to produce an engine  that was worthy of being called a Bentley engine provided that that effortless talk
And his team turned their attention to the smaller twin turbo V8 the 4-liter twin turbo V8 gives us a  similar feeling with a lot less capacity but first the new V8 sucks down fuel at an alarming rate  so Engineers turn to a new technology using cylinder deactivation dropping Â
Onto porcelain has enabled us to drop the fuel consumption disengaging the cylinders shuts down half of the engine during moments of  low demand turning a V8 into a V4 it’s part of modern reality that all car companies need  to consider smaller models smaller engines more fuel efficient vehicles Â
It’s got decent fuel economy for something this big and this heavy and this powerful eight engine is far more fuel efficient than its predecessor but that doesn’t help the Continental save weight and the heavier a machine Â
Is the harder it is to stop an equal match for the Bentley’s engines are its brakes it’s got  huge huge carbon ceramic rotors they’re basically as big as an economy car’s entire wheel the Conti  needs large brakes because the machine deals with a tremendous amount of energy during heavy braking Â
Automotive brake systems transform the car’s movement or kinetic energy into heat everything good kilometers an hour a maximum stop for a 1 600 kilogram vehicle generates enough electricity  to keep a 100 watt light bulb lit for an hour and a half the Continental GT weighs over 2250 Â
Kilograms from our top speed to standstill the brakes have to deal with 10 megajoules of energy 10 megajoules is enough power to keep an average family home going for six hours it’s massive  massive carbon ceramic brakes that you can just dump a ton of speed into that and they’re unfazed Â
By the fact that the car weighs 5 000 plus pounds the largest disc brakes on the passenger car in  the world well that’s another unique Bentley development which we’re particularly proud of 420 millimeters each carbon ceramic disc brake uses eight piston calipers and is Â
The size of a deep dish pizza [Music] if you go fast you’ve got a stop fast While torque fuel performance has been a bent in trait for nearly a hundred years if it wasn’t for the craftsmanship behind the badge there’d be just another sports  car for a brand like Bentley with this Rich history of nearly no 100 views it  is very important to understand what are our DNA
[Music] today that DNA is found here inside the Bentley Factory in crew England  built for World War II the factory is entrenched in the history of British  motoring and Engineering nothing would prepare you for working in Bentley the  processes and the materials we deal with are completely different to anywhere else
This is where the Brand’s coach building past combines with modern Technologies to create the  new continental GTO Continental takes about 120 hours to build it feels very high particularly  from the car industry but the difference here is at Bentley we make everything [Music] Â
Unlike most car factories the crew there are individual shops devoted specifically to Wood leather and the famed Bentley power plant it’s about the art of transforming those materials and putting them together into a car keeping all those substances in check starts inside a unique laboratory run by Helen davok Â
She and her team use a variety of machines to test each material to its absolute limit  our job quite simply is to make the best products even better than they already are  materials which range from man-made metals and glass compounds Â
To the tactile parts of the interior wooden leather are natural products and maybe many  people don’t realize the technology that goes into them everything in the vehicle from the steering  wheel to the iPod drawer is built for maximum durability on the outside it simply looks like Â
A piece of wood potentially when you look at the science of it it’s a multiple layer Construction [Music] thank you there’s only so much real-world testing that can happen in a lab [Music] so the team consistently tests materials in the world’s harshest environments Â
To take whole bandlas and we leave them in the desert for literally  years and all they do is sit in the hottest environments and they  were expecting this wood a natural product to last that kind of environment yeah high-tech science that begins in a very old-school wood shop Â
Where 167 Artisans craft some of the finest pieces of wood in the world currently we’re  taking about the top 10 percent between 10 and 20 percent of the top veneers across the world the veneers are made from wood that is sourced around the globe Â
There are 14 types of wood and nine veneer options [Music] each layer must first be bolt cut to size before it can be perfectly matched [Music]  the parts we use at Bentley actually require mirror matching Â
Will Edge and Joint joints one side of the veneer to create a mirror image we’ll flip the pieces  over create a nice mirror image into the center of the part when it’s digressed onto the part next the wood is coated with a strong adhesive before being pressed onto the parts
It takes seven hours to make one piece and there can be up to 33 wooden pieces in each Continental  extreme heat and extreme pressure for about five to ten minutes and she allows the veneer  to permanently bond to the substrate this is a sanded lightly to remove any impurities then Â
They’re ready for lacquering what it actually gets is five layers of polyester lacquer  as you take the surface similar to the sanding stages we use grades of paper gives it this very kind of dull matted finish  after the lacquer is applied the pieces are polished
We’ll take it onto our high-powered speed polishing mops shine up using a series  of wax movement techniques to actually gets any little scratches or ripples up  the final piece is more mirror than wood however the treatment isn’t only for appearances  coat creates a microscopic protective barrier against heat and corrosion while some pieces Â
Are pushed to their limits outside others are heated to their core right inside the laboratory  so what we’ve got here is a thermal cycling chamber this machine goes perhaps twice as  hot as the hottest day you would get in the desert to as cold as the coldest parts of Russia
Leather elements are verified for wear resistance  what we’re interested in obviously with this machine is wear resistance we’d expect more than 20 000 in an ounce of a car  would be something nowadays say that this would ensure [Music] metals are tested to remain durable and aesthetically pleasing this is Â
A salt spray cabinet which we use to accelerate corrosion environments each  wheel is drenched in a copper accelerated salt spray with an acidic pH of 3.2 for several hours  that’s 80 of the acidity in a single can of soda what’s really important for us is
This extremely harsh environment that we expect all of our Wheels to perform to if they don’t meet that requirements they won’t be used ornamently  thank you once materials have been tested and approved it’s time to put them into production  inside a factory that not only creates cutting-edge machines
Eight years before Bentleys were manufactured in crew these brick walls were constructed to  Harbor the Ferocious Thunder of 27 liter fighter plane engines previous booked in  1938 as a factory to build a 12 cylinder Merlin engines to power the Spitfire and Lancaster planes Â
Fire was one of the fastest and most Victorious British airplanes in World War II it’s a Heritage  valued by the craftsmen who today build more W12 engines than any Factory in the world  since 1946 the brand has built over 66 000 12 cylinder engines
Kept the building the same and just renewed the technology that’s inside them Merlin 12-cylinder aircraft engines produced over a thousand horsepower not a far cry from  today’s Bentley 12-cylinder engine which musters up an air-worthy 616 horsepower  we build more 12 cylinder engines than all other manufacturers put together Â
The engine block begins its Journey to the line on a tall slightly more sophisticated  than the ones used in the 1930s so the first job we do is we take the engine out of tillage lift it across onto one of these machines here Â
The machine is an agv or automated guided vehicle and it allows engine builders to  move the massive blocks with ease we then separate the bed plate from the main crankcase how it fit the crankshaft this is the first stage which we give an engine its main identity  step is done by hand
For the next part of building a Bentley engine we rotate the  engine around and we apply oil this is the first time oil touches the engine now the engine’s ready for its Pistons  we then automatically build up the Pistons so each engine has 12 Pistons 12 con rods
And also 24 different bearings so all those are built automatically as you can see in  the machine there the machine connects the Piston head to the conrod far more precisely  than a human when they finish the process this will have a complete set of Pistons Â
One of the main difference as you can see if you look on the top of one of the Pistons it’s not  flat what it means is that we can get the best compression ratio on the engine itself [Music] the higher the compression ratio the better the fuel economy
Once the Pistons are done being fit by hand the engine goes through an automated sealant process let me do that for a variety of reasons one’s volume and also  for Quality it also gives us a very consistent product every single time foreign
So what we have all the camshafts on the top of the heads  and we have these devices on the end that allow us to change the  characteristics and the amount of torque that the engine producing at any one time Laughs timing is important for the engines and the line itself there are 21 stations installing nearly 700 parts inside of each W12 power plant depending on demand nearly 250 engines can come off the line in a single week  every 16 minutes we have a brand new engine coming to the start of the Â
Line and a completely finished engine comes off the end of the line as well that engine is the most powerful W12 in the automotive world  but before the engine is completed it must be engraved this stage here this robot will give the engine its unique engine number so Â
That will go with a vehicle identification number and make up the history for the car most challenging in the station on the line is this process here so this is fitting  the loom the Looms are always particularly difficult to fit it requires the operators Â
To know exactly where each and every single connector is going to go to on the engine the  loom looks like one piece but it’s actually comprised of dozens of wires that allow the  high-tech engine to communicate with the cutting-edge electronic system Â
Installing it is a time-tested process created by workers who are sometimes Generations in the  making we’ve been Building engines here now for 75 years so it’s really not that uncommon  to see fathers sons and multi-generations coming through and learning how to build them
Every single engine we produce we bring it into one of these test cells and then we run it for  21 minutes to check the power check there’s no leaks make sure the engine is perfect every time  hot testing an engine like this is the equivalent of a 16 kilometer Drive [Applause]
Which we build is a Supercar engine high performance is only part of the Supercar  equation [Music] what you’ll see here at our facility is craftsmanship on a  mass scale and we’ve got a staggering choice of options and colors [Music]  there are 13 standard leather options to choose from and each one Â
Is matched by a nearly endless number of exterior colors in the Bentley paint  shop we’ve got a massive color palette we can offer a range of around 150 colors here [Music]  each Bentley will be decorated with nearly 45 kilos of paint [Music] Â
When the body is finished being colored clear coated and then baked  only then can Craftsmen begin to apply the classic Conti shine [Music] the lunar finish is what sentimentary apart from the rest of the manufacturers Craftsmen use a variety of different levels of sandpaper to remove microns of paint [Music] the Finish
Great finishes are only half of the Bentley story [Music] to stay competitive Bentley must put greater emphasis on sub-assembly than anyone else in the  business and the rest of the industry about 90 of the people work on the body of the car work on the Â
Car itself here at Bentley we’ve got a complete shift 80 of our people work on the parts that go  into the car rather than working on the car itself [Music] it takes over 700 outside contractors  producing 18 000 parts from 32 countries on six continents to supply the Bentley Factory
It’s very challenging because actually your your own supplier if things aren’t  right we’ve got to put it right and this is the area we’d start an area like this  thankfully the quality levels coming out of these areas is just what we expect for a Bentley [Music]  and the steering wheel
This is Noel Thompson knows one of our Master Craftsmen one of  the special tools that Knoll uses is actually a fork and it’s a fork  that gives us this very unique pitch between stitches on a steering wheel each handcrafted wheel can take up to four and a half hours to finish
Thank you and to contrast Stitch the entire cabin can take over five hours part of that cabin includes handcrafted seats  at the moment we’re in the seats Technologies for leather construction is a four-step process cut so build [Music] and cover [Music] Â
Oh you’ll see that they inspector hide this will be selection to the  different rays of hide that we will be using for different areas of the scene  selecting the correct pieces for just a single set of seats can take almost two hours
Six inspection tables on average per week would go through four thousand hides it takes five hours to complete a full set of seats for each GT every phase is meticulously done by hand [Music]  except for one very special station where a robot sows 5 000 stitches to craft a single Beam for Â
The headrest if I was going to stitch that by hand I would say that would take you a good week it’s essentially what the Bentley Heritage is built on very traditional materials assembled  in a very traditional way it’s more akin to Furniture Megan than it is to make in cars Â
Much easier to use the fake stuff it’s a real challenge particularly when it’s a  lot more competitive than it was say 30 years ago while the interior sub-assemblies are finished a brand new engine is being prepped for installation the question is whether or not it’s too late for the mark
Foreign [Music] GT has been in production for over a decade in the Supercar realm that is an eternity  especially in a changing world where fossil fuels are on the Run Bentley’s solution offer  customers two engine choices their famed W12 and a new V8 that’s more fuel efficient [Music] Â
Both engines and production on the very same powertrain line  we’re in the engine preparation area we’ve made these engines that you can  see behind us we’ve got the vat engine and the big powerful 6-liter W12 engine Technicians fit exhaust pipes shocks [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] once prepared the powertrain is ready to be bolted to the body this  is where we wed the powertrain with a car and this is really  where everything starts to happen in a car plant because this is critical just 25 volts secure the V8 into the engine bay when you’re dealing with a Â
High power performance car like a continental this  is critical every one of those screws has got to be to the right tightness monitors record the torque and angle of each screw to ensure quality we won’t  allow any car to pass forward with a screw that isn’t tightened to the correct hold
The engine marriage is one of the key stations inside the 150  000 square meter final assembly area [Music] the build Hall at any car plan is really the heartbeat  this is where it started build process so this is his journey from being a body shell to a full car
It takes 104 hours to build just one Continental GT the production line essentially is very similar  to other car plants the difficulty we’ve got at Bentley is we mix three different models together assembling multiple models on one line exponentially increases the need for Â
Efficiency and organization you can imagine the material that goes into a two-door coupe  is very different to a convertible which is different again to afford or [Music]  install the radiator [Music]  headlights body panels bumpers and wheels [Music] [Music]  then all the natural materials that have been painstakingly sourced and tested converged [Music] Â
Thank you one of the last stops is the handcrafted steering wheel we’re on checkpoint a checkpoint Aid is important in this assembly  process this is the last process before a car leaves the factory foreign the latest incarnation of Bentley’s signature Continental is complete [Music] Â
But does shaving weight and adding fuel economy make for a better Bentley [Applause] [Music]  the r-type Continental many regard it as one of the most elegant cars ever made  the r-type propels the brand to the Forefront of the Luxury Auto Realm Â
More than half a century later Bentley finds itself at a similar Crossroads Foreign [Music] foreign Car industry has moved on Leaps and Bounds so what we don’t do is sit back on our laurels  Bentley solution is the brand new Continental GT V8s a lighter smarter and hopefully quicker  machine for the modern world V8s still have their own Mythos people still associate them Â
With big Power and fast cars but they’re not quite as prestigious as a 12-cylinder engine enduring wo of day being answered in a very different way the V8 is a little less special in some people’s  eyes but when you look at the power this thing makes and what is capable of
You’re not missing out on anything V8s Roars to the tune of 521 horsepower and the Machine  offers 502 foot-pounds of torque figures which provide the classic Bentley ground the new twin turbo V8 takes the GT from zero to 100 kilometers in just over 4.5 seconds
The funny thing about Bentley’s is you get in them and you say  okay it’s 4.6 seconds to 60 that’s quick and then you realize it’s like  sitting in your living room and having your living room go from 0 to 60 to 4.6
Continue to keep the pedal down and you’ll reach 160 kilometers an hour in just 9.2 seconds  they just keep going and going and going it’s not the 0-60 it’s the 60 to 120 and the 120 to Â
180 they just never stop The Machine’s top speed Taps out just a shade under 309 kilometers per  hour so you have a little V8 with turbos on it pushing something the size of a small house at Â
200 miles an hour or near there at 100 kilometers an hour a massive 420 millimeter brakes bring the  GT to a complete stop in 32 meters you can make a 5 000 pound car do anything you want it to do as Â
Long as you upsize all the components tires suspension and of course brakes Something’s  Gotta scrub all that speed off the beauty of the Bentley brakes is that they just kind of feel  normal there’s nothing really special about the way they feel except that they stop a 5 Â
000 pound car the way most brakes can stop at 3 000 pound car from inside the V8s is  all classic Bentley from top to bottom there’s a reason why Bentleys are very expensive and  part of that comes from the craftsmanship that goes into building those Interiors
At 157 000 Euros the GT V8s isn’t for the conservative crowd  however the price tag is justified by its rare combination of speed and luxury [Music]  it may not be the Bentley way to do something smaller [Music]  change in size is something W.O Bentley would have agreed with Â
If you create good car a fast car and at least in terms of the GT I think the best in its class  you stick to these basic statements of wo Bentley and do it in the more modern way now Â
Like wo’s first engine the new GT is a clever step towards a smarter future one  of the world’s most renowned British icons as long as the downsizing happens in a way  that’s not offensive to Bentley’s brand hey bring it on especially if the cars are faster
2 Comments
Boring
buy it for 5000k sell it 5 years later for 50k and thats real figutes