Bentley's Continental GT V8 is pitch perfect

31.12.69

Looking out, we were surprised to see not three svelte sports racing cars braking hard at the end of their charge up the pit straight, but three big and heavy Continental GTs in nose-to-tail formation, lining up for the first corner. Then they rocketed away out of sight, looking for all the world as if they were racing – though, in fact, their professional drivers were merely warming the engines and tyres before we lesser mortals got our chance to take the cars out on the circuit.

That fabulous racket from the elegant twinsets of figure-of-eight shaped tailpipes was not, however, as guilelessly authentic as it seemed. The Continental GT V8 sounds as it does because Bentley’s engineers laboured for years to create its cry. Like every other element in this highly wrought artifice of a car, the V8’s exhaust note is a studied and calculated creation. In fact, they even subjected it to computer modelling and to the judgment of focus groups to make sure they got precisely the right pitch of burble when the engine was idling, of roar when it was accelerating and of howl when it was full out.