The Grand Tour

These modern-classic luxury super-GTs from Bentley, Aston Martin and Ferrari each uphold their brand values in subtly different ways

- SIMON HUCKNALL

In the early noughties, Bentley Motors was barely washing its face. A mere 1000 Arnage, Azure and Continental R models were creeping down Crewe's lines, only just enough to sustain the factory. Worse still, each model's production was labour-intensive, being largely handbuilt and typically costing around £200,000. The company used a pyramid graph internally to show the layers of global affordability for such cars: only the tiniest tip at its peak related to Bentley's buyers - and that was a real problem.

Its new parent, the Volkswagen Group, had secured the Bentley brand along with its Crewe site in 1998 (with BMW buying the Rolls-Royce name and migrating to a new factory near Goodwood) - and it had a plan. That came in the shape of an all-new car - one that was not only cheaper and easier to build, but which also upheld the all-important brand image while finding a far broader audience further down that pyramid graph. The Continental GT was to be Bentley's saviour.

The Continental GT we have with us today is particularly notable, because it saw active service as a Bentley press car when new, which explains its generous Mulliner specification. Joining it are two V12 coupés that both arrived in 2004, a year after the Bentley, and competed with it at different levels. The Ferrari 612 Scaglietti is here because, despite costing £60,000 more than the £110,000 Conti when new, it squared up to it as a true GT with nearequal power, performance and practicality. However, if your budget had been nearer the Bentley's list price, you couldn't have ignored the all-new £103,000 Aston Martin DB9. Despite Aston positioning it as a sports car rather than a GT, it traded little in performance and cabin space to the Conti, and gave buyers who couldn't find another £60,000 for the company's older Vanquish model a foothold in the Aston brand.