Sub-£100k Bentley Continental GT3-R for sale
Bentley's take on the GT3 cost quarter of a million when new. Ten years on, it's finally dipped to five figures
Every once in a blue moon, Bentley stirs its race team from a lengthy spell in hibernation, bags a handful of premier-class wins in various endurance series, only to then fall dormant once again for another decade or so. Just look at its last outright Le Mans win. Bentley hadn’t stepped foot on a circuit for the best part of 70 years and then, out of nowhere, it entered a fully-fledged prototype at the 2001 edition of the 24-hour race before snatching the win from the all-conquering Audi two years later.
Then, having abstained from racing for another decade or so, it returned to the world of motorsport with a car that, on the surface at least, looked completely out of place in the Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche-filled GT scene. Despite being outrageously humongous, the Continental GT3 was a proper bit of kit. M-Sport, which developed the GT3 car and ran the factory team, used the Conti’s vast footprint to its advantage by fitting a giant front splitter and a massive rear diffuser. It also had the largest rear wing on the grid (probably), and produced an almighty burble from its side exit exhausts. Between 2013 and 2017, the first iteration of Continental GT3s had racked up 45 wins from 120 races - not bad for a car the size of a small moon.
Alongside the race car, a ‘road-going’ (and that’s a very loose term) version called the GT3-R, like the one you see here, was released to bring some of that motorsport magic to Joe Public. Like the racer, it was powered by Bentley’s 4.0-litre V8 which, with a pair of upgraded turbochargers bolted to it, could churn out 580hp - not far off what the competition car would have been developing after the balance of performance rules had their way.
Bentley tried its very best to offer a more track-focused chassis, too. Carbon ceramic brakes, forged 21-inch alloy wheels, the removal of the rear seats, a lighter Akrapovic titanium exhaust system and various other carbon fibre bits shaved off an impressive 100kg from the overall weight. Granted, it still gave the scales a hard time at 2,195kg, which isn’t even in the ballpark of most track-day specials. The company did however attempt to work around the extra heft with a stiffer suspension set-up and torque vectoring - the latter being a first for Bentley, though it rarely dabbled in the former.
But for all the carbon bits, boot spoiler and eye-popping stickers, this is still a Continental GT at the end of the day. Any seats that weren’t ejected were trimmed in quilted leather with green accents, while the infotainment system and air conditioning remained in place because removing them would be uncouth, frankly. But there are thousands of lightweight, race-inspired specials out there to choose from. The GT3-R was an outlier because it felt like you could actually live with one day-to-day and not come to resent it.
Of course, none of that came cheap. Bentley only produced 300 examples of the GT3-R, with the 50-or-so cars allocated to the UK getting a quarter of a million-pound price tag. Values have dipped over the model’s 10-year lifespan, but this is one of the first we’ve seen that’s dropped below the six-figure mark. It’s a tidy-looking example, too, with just 16,000 miles on the clock and features numerous optional extras such as a reversing camera and a GPS tracker. All for £99,975. Yes, that’s 991-gen 911 GT3 territory, and if it’s a V8 you’re after there are plenty of AMG GT Rs available for that sort of money. But you’ll find a sea of them at any given car meet. Not so the Conti. Whether that or the motorsport link and limited-edition cache is worth overlooking the more obvious German choices, is for you to decide…
SPECIFICATION | BENTLEY CONTINENTAL GT3-R
Engine: 3,993cc V8, twin-turbo
Transmission: eight-speed automatic, four-wheel drive
Power (hp): 580@6,000rpm, 600hp on overboost for 15 sec
Torque (lb ft): 518@1,700rpm, 553lb ft on overboost for 15sec
MPG: 22.3
CO2: 295g/km
Year registered: 2015
Recorded mileage: 16,000
Price new: £237,000
Yours for: £99,975
For me absolutely not!
Take a heavy, elegant, fast and luxurious GT car weighing over 2 Mt, put some garish stickers, paint and interior affects on, a dodgy looking wing, claim weight saving by removing rear seats (equivalent to throwing a deck chair off the QE2), ruin the smooth suspension and then claim to be some sort of racing homologiation special directly related to the GT racing program Bentley were running at time.
It is an overpriced sales gimmick, appealing to people with more money than taste.
If you want a GT3 buy a GT3, if you want a Bentley buy a Bentley. This bares no resemblance in looks or performance to a "GT3".
Always looked like one of those projects which, besides the engine upgrades, involved too many minimal engineering tricks ( take seats out, cheap rear spoiler and some awful decals ) to try and get to something which it was never really designed to be.
Bit of a fail in the end.
For me absolutely not!
Take a heavy, elegant, fast and luxurious GT car weighing over 2 Mt, put some garish stickers, paint and interior affects on, a dodgy looking wing, claim weight saving by removing rear seats (equivalent to throwing a deck chair off the QE2), ruin the smooth suspension and then claim to be some sort of racing homologiation special directly related to the GT racing program Bentley were running at time.
It is an overpriced sales gimmick, appealing to people with more money than taste.
If you want a GT3 buy a GT3, if you want a Bentley buy a Bentley. This bares no resemblance in looks or performance to a "GT3".
This is just a standard "trim and paint" special edition with a bit of tune and the GT3-R name is a joke ...
Not this one which looks awful but others
The GT3-R just looks like a joke.
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