PREMIER LEAGUE
On the face of it, these would appear to be two very similar cars, albeit separated by an automotive generation: both expensive, glamorous two-door coupes, both bearing the winged Bentley badges and sharing the historic Continental model name which evokes images of streamlined ’50s Bentleys whisking their occupants across Europe.
In practice though, they’re really very different: one is a handcrafted exclusive product which took the ageing Spirit/Shadow platform to its very limits, while the other was born from a brief to improve the sales volume of the Bentley brand in order to ensure its survival and is a temple to modern production processes and technology.
The pricing is perhaps the perfect illustration of their differences: the 1997 Continental R in our photos 1997 Continental R in our photos would have been £187,000 before extras, while the 2008 Continental Speed GT retailed for £138,000. Factor in the ten years
