Feel free to disagree, but if you ask us, the Bentley Continental GT is arguably the best car in the world at the moment. Sure you’ll need to fork over a few of your organs to afford one, but no other automobile blends supreme comfort, handsome styling, and sheer thrust in the same was as Bentley’s beefy grand tourer. It is not, however, our go-to when thinking of a track weapon, but that didn’t stop Bentley from trying to conquer Pikes Peak in this mighty Bentley Continental GT3 back in 2019.
The crew from Crewe clearly weren’t messing around when it came to prepping their mountain monster, thoroughly working their race-proven 4.0-litre V8 to produce over 750 horsepower and 1,000 Nm at sea level. The Pikes Peak course starts at 9,300 ft, and climbs all the way up to a dizzying 14,100 ft, where the air is third less dense than at sea level. That meant Bentley had to run even higher power levels for the race itself, fitting new pistons and conrods, while boost was turned up to over 2.2 bar, with a thicker carbon fibre intake manifold to handle the monumental forces at play.
However, this Bentley’s pièce de résistance has to be its one-off Inconel exhaust manifolds, 3D-printed via laser sintering by Akrapovič, which lead to larger turbos that vent into very short exhausts and dedicated screamer pipes that exit behind the front wheel. It’s safe to say this Bentley’s bark and bite are both substantial.
While foul weather unfortunately scuppered Bentley’s dreams of domination, this Continental GT3 was, by all accounts, easily the fastest car on the hill back in 2019. As a one of one Pikes Peak special chassis, unbound by the restrictions of FIA GT3 homologation regulations and built by the factory to be the most extreme Bentley GT3 ever made, you’d be hard pressed to find a more rapid race car for your next hillclimb.
