In 2003, a quaint old British manufacturer launched a new car. It was the most powerful in its history, the fastest by a mile and the first capable of 200mph even if the official figures didn’t admit it. Yet it was also, and curiously, almost certainly the cheapest once adjusted for inflation. And it changed the face and fortunes not only of that manufacturer, but also the category into which it was launched.
Can it really be 22 years? I never wrote about it at the time because I’d been hired by Bentley to write a book about the history of the company (depressingly cheap secondhand and no royalties…) leading up to its launch, but it did mean I was present at a lot of meetings during its development.
One of the biggest issues was what to call it and for a long time ‘Continental’ was ruled out as the company already had a Continental R and T series. An enormous range of names was considered – ‘Ardent’ is the one I recall most vividly largely because it made me snigger in a room full of people in front of whom I really should not have been sniggering – before someone saw sense and realised that it already had the perfect name and it should not be set aside for a couple of old crocks already in their death throes. ‘Continental’ it would be, with ‘GT’ added for good measure.
