Bentley

The address of this page was a stock listing on a used-car dealer site that no longer exists. The stock is gone; what follows is a reference to the marque itself — what you will meet on the UK used market, and what is worth checking. Nothing here is offered for sale.

The Continental GT is the car that changed Bentley from a low-volume coachbuilder into a series producer, and it is the model that dominates the marque’s used market. It shares a great deal of hardware with the Volkswagen Group, which is a point in its favour mechanically.

Buy the history, not the car

Used-car buying guides for the Continental make the same observation repeatedly: many cars are advertised with a full service history and do not have one. Ask for invoices rather than stamps, and treat a gap as a cost to be quantified rather than a detail.

The costs that are not obvious

Servicing runs on a twelve-month or fixed-mileage schedule, with brake fluid, coolant and spark plugs on their own longer intervals — and on a twelve-cylinder engine the plug change alone is a substantial job. Carbon-ceramic brakes, where fitted, are an order of magnitude more expensive to replace than steel ones, so establish which specification the car has early. Insurance sits in the top group and the aluminium bodywork makes even modest damage expensive to repair.

Emissions

Cars of this age and engine size will not generally meet the London ULEZ standard by a comfortable margin, but the answer for any individual car comes from the registration and the official checker rather than from the model name.