The Bentley Continental GT reminds me of nothing so much as the ultimate expression of the VW group's performance ethic; it is the furthest point, on a vertical curve where performance and driver involvement are the axes and a three-litre A4 quattro is the departure point on a straight line that runs up through the Audis TT, S4, RS4, S6 and RS6 with a Golf R32 and a Passat W8 on there too.

That might sound like a terrible thing to say about the new Continental, a car with such presence, with such provenance, with so much real and genuine beauty about it. But while all of those cars are brilliantly engineered - some of the best money can buy - they are so crushingly competent that you find yourself getting a little bored after a while and, ultimately, they leaving you a little cold. The Bentley did that to me.

This 552bhp, 198mph, £110,000 King of Grand Tourers, on paper one of the most awe-inspiring and emotionally potent cars to hit the highway this or any year, is actually a bit of a turn off. Its problem is not that it's not good enough; it is instead that maybe it is too good. And the only reason we know this is that we drove the Bentley back to back with another car, a car that's nothing like good enough for the money its makers are asking for it, but a car we couldn't help but fall in love with over and over again - the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish.

The new Bentley Continental GT, while maybe not as rakish as the Vanquish, is possibly the ultimate expression of this particularly appealing kind of English cool or at least it would be if it had a sense of character to match. But to find that out you need to get your hands on a Vanquish and you need to get out of England, and into Scotland.

There are still roads in this nation of ours where, with the application of only a modicum of common sense, you can still drive bloody hard. Roads which reach the horizon long before they ever reach a bend. Bends which define themselves with a simple, clearly visible apex a long time before you ever reach them. Good roads, fast roads, best in their class kind of roads as WO Bentley might have put it. Roads where you can reach mumble-mumble miles per hour and still stop in plenty of time to allow for caravans coming the other way.

The Bentley uses its own version of the VW Phaeton's W12, a compact and impressively torquey coupling of two Golf VR6 engines. Bentley's engineers - who have spent the last three decades squeezing the old Crewe 6.75-litre chuffer through endlessly demanding emission regs - have been given their head and come up with an extraordinary twin-turbo development of the W12.

Rated at 552bhp at 6100rpm, not only is it the most powerful engine you can buy, it also possesses the world's most usable torque curve. Torque builds pretty rapidly from zero revs to 1600rpm where it flatlines all the way to the limiter - and delivers 479lb ft. Behind the wheel that translates into an extraordinary driving experience. Bentley uses the same, excellent, six-speed automatic gearbox as Jaguar does in the new XJ, only beefed up considerably, as you might imagine, and re-engineered to deal with the GT's four-wheel drive system. Unless you slot it into sport mode, it's as refined and effortless as you would expect of a Bentley (but were, until now, usually disappointed). Leave it in D and the car just hammers along, the four-wheel drive dealing most effectively with any excess torque-inspired bad behaviour. 'Tip-in' using the discreet paddles behind the steering wheel and you understand instantly the impact of a torque curve like that; in whatever gear, the car just accelerates, instantly, and keeps on accelerating at the same rate until it runs out of revs. Extra speed has never been more immediately available. So the GT is incredibly fast - always.

And the Bentley handles - extremely well considering the laws of physics at work here. The whole thing weighs just 15kgs under 2.4 tons, including all that engine ahead of the front wheels. Just driving this car through quick and indeed not so quick bends is something of a revelation. You sit up high with a terrific view all around and with a big wheel in front of you like an Arnage and yet you could never drive an Arnage at these kind of speeds on public roads - and the Arnage is only 50cms longer. And then there are the brakes, nearly 16 inches across at the front and so bigger than any disc ever fitted to a road car.

Compared with the Vanquish, the Bentley wins. It's better quality, better value, and almost certainly faster. If it is important to you, the GT is also more comfortable, quieter and much more practical. But drive it alongside the Vanquish and possibly even, when it arrives, the DB7 replacement and think about the subjective measures; which is better looking, what's more exciting to slip inside and which engine do you want to listen to? You'll understand pretty quickly then why 007 gave up on up Bentley after just one outing.

Michael Harvey

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