Bentley Continental R

Scope of this guide

This guide is scoped to the Bentley Continental R coupe in its original 6.75L turbocharged V8 petrol form, the two-door, rear-wheel drive car that Bentley unveiled at the Geneva show in 1991 and built with a four-speed automatic gearbox until the 1996 model year update. It is not a guide to the later standard cars with the liquid-cooled chargecooler, to the Continental S, to the shorter-wheelbase Continental T, to the 420 bhp Continental R Mulliner of 1998 onwards, to the Le Mans Series and Final Series cars, or to the Azure convertible that shared the running gear. Those cars have their own figures, and an advert that says only "Continental R" can describe any of them.

We have not driven this model for this article. Everything here comes from three cited sources: Bentley's own heritage entry for a 2003 Continental R on its newsroom site, PistonHeads' November 2020 "PH Heroes" feature on the car, and the government recall checker. We also read Bentley's June 2022 Goodwood news item, PistonHeads' November 2021 report on a Mulliner, an owners' thread on PistonHeads and Wikipedia, and we flag every point that rests on them. Where sources disagree we say so rather than pick a winner quietly. Prices are history, not valuations.

The figures at a glance

• Engine: 6.75L turbocharged V8 petrol, an aluminium-block, pushrod V8 of 6750 cc with a Garrett turbocharger, taken from the Turbo R. PistonHeads prints 6,753cc; Bentley prints 6,750 cc, which is the figure we store.
• Power: 355 bhp, which is the figure Bentley gives for the launch car. We convert that to about 360 PS (355 x 1.01387 is about 360). Wikipedia says power was never officially published at launch, and other sources give lower and higher numbers, covered below.
• Torque: 617 Nm, which is our conversion of the 455 lb ft that PistonHeads prints in its specification box (455 x 1.3558 is about 617). Bentley's pages do not state a torque figure for this car.
• 0-100 km/h: 6.6 seconds. Bentley and PistonHeads both give 6.6 seconds, but as 0-62 mph, which is 99.8 km/h, so we treat it as the 0-100 km/h time.
• Top speed: 245 km/h, which is Bentley's 152 mph converted (152 x 1.609 is about 245). PistonHeads prints 145 mph (limited), about 233 km/h.
• Drive: rear-wheel drive, with a General Motors four-speed automatic gearbox and a front-mounted engine.
• Weight: PistonHeads lists 2,420 kg in its specification box.

Why the quoted power varies

Wikipedia says power was never officially published for the early cars, so a modern reader has to work from retrospective numbers. Bentley's newsroom says the launch car "developed 355 bhp". PistonHeads prints 325 at 4,200 rpm. Wikipedia lists 325 hp (330 PS) for 1991 to 1993 and 360 hp for 1994 and 1995, after the Cosworth-revised cylinder heads, and calls the figures estimates. An owners' thread on PistonHeads talks about 335 bhp for early cars and 385 bhp for the later cars with the chargecooler. These cannot all be right for the same car.

We use Bentley's 355 bhp because it is the manufacturer's own number, but we cannot tell whether it describes the 1991 car or the later 1994 car, and we have not checked a dated period document. If you are comparing two cars, compare their model years, not their power quotes. Our catalogue used to say 400 bhp and 835 Nm for this entry. We found no source that gives that pair for the standard Continental R, and 400 bhp is close to the launch figure of the Continental T, so we have not kept it.

How the other figures were checked

Bentley says the Continental R reached 62 mph in 6.6 seconds and 152 mph, a 9 mph improvement over the Turbo R, and that its body was no lighter. PistonHeads lists the same 6.6 seconds but a limited 145 mph. Wikipedia attributes 145 mph and 6.6 seconds to the 1991 to 1993 cars and 155 mph to a 1996 UK brochure, which it says gives "sub 6 seconds". That is where a 155 mph or 250 km/h figure comes from, and it belongs to the later car with the chargecooler, so we have not used it. Bentley's heritage page says the Mulliner upgrade cut the 0-62 mph time to 6.0 seconds, which is the figure our catalogue previously held. Our catalogue also gave 250 km/h, which we have replaced with 245 km/h.

For torque, PistonHeads gives 455 lb ft at 2,400 rpm while Wikipedia gives 450 lb ft (610 Nm) at 2,000 rpm for the early cars, and about 500 lb ft for 1994 and 1995. We have used the PistonHeads number because it appears next to the performance figures that Bentley also quotes, but it is the weakest number here, because its source is not stated.

How the car came about

The Continental R was based on the chassis and running gear of the Turbo R but with a two-door coupe body in place of the four-door saloon. Bentley says it was the first Bentley with its own unique body since the R Type Continental of 1952, and that two years of production were reportedly sold within weeks of the Geneva launch. PistonHeads calls it a charming reminder of old-school Bentley, and the gearbox has four ratios, which PistonHeads says is about half the number in a modern Bentley.

Dates, prices and numbers built

Production of the Continental R ran from 1991 to 2003 across all versions, with the last cars being Final Series editions. Bentley's heritage entry says 1,548 Continental R cars were built in total: 1,335 standard cars, 158 Mulliner cars, 44 Le Mans Series cars and 11 Final Series cars. Wikipedia gives a different total, 1,504 for the R and S together, and a combined 1,854 with the Continental T. We therefore have no figure for the 1991 to 1995 cars alone and our catalogue holds no production count for them.

The launch price depends on whom you read. Wikipedia lists 178,000 pounds in the UK and 271,780 dollars in the United States in 1992. PistonHeads' feature has both 168,294 pounds in the text and 187,354 pounds (1995) in its specification box, so we do not rely on any one number. The same box gives "from 40,000 pounds" as a current price in 2020. All of these are history, not a valuation, and values have moved since.

What to check before buying

• Confirm which version you are looking at. Ask for the build date, the engine number and the original specification, and whether the car has the Cosworth-revised heads from 1994 or the chargecooler from 1996.
• Look for corrosion. Top Gear's buying page names it as the main issue on an old Continental, but we could not read that page, which returned a block, so treat that as a pointer, not a finding.
• Ask for a full service history from a Bentley specialist. PistonHeads says servicing an old Bentley is not like servicing most classics, that parts are not stocked by typical motor factors and that Bentley-trained mechanics are scarce and charge accordingly.
• On pre-1994 cars the owners' thread says head-gasket failures are less common than on later ones, but another owner reports replacing gaskets on a neglected car. It is anecdotal. Ask when the gaskets and cooling system were last checked.
• Check that the electrics, automatic gearbox, brakes and suspension have been looked at, and ask what that work cost.
• Early cars ran 16 inch alloy wheels and later ones 17 inch, according to the same thread, so check that the wheels match the year.
• Check that the car is really a Continental R and not a Continental T or an Azure listed under the wrong name.

We found no published running costs or parts price list, so any figure you are given is an estimate.

Recalls and the DVSA check

We did not run the government checker, because it needs a registration number or the make, model and year, and we are not looking at a specific car. The page says a car's registration can be checked on the MOT service for unfixed safety recalls, that you must not drive a vehicle with a serious safety defect, and that the manufacturer tells you about non-safety recalls. We found no recall notice for the Continental R in any source, and absence from our sources is not a clean bill of health. A car imported from another market may not appear, so also ask a Bentley specialist whether any service bulletin applies.

About the photograph

The picture at the top of this page shows a 1993 Continental R in Brooklands green on an auction display, photographed on 8 February 2017 by Alexandre Prevot (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons). We cropped it and reduced its size. It has no registration plate fitted, so none is shown, and we found no person in the cropped frame.

Verdict

The Continental R in this guide is a 355 bhp, 617 Nm, 6.6 seconds to 100 km/h, 245 km/h, rear-wheel drive coupe in its early 1991 to 1995 form, with the caveat that the power and torque figures are retrospective and disputed. It is a large, heavy, hand-finished car whose condition and history matter far more than any figure on the page. Decide which version you want, ask for the paperwork, pay for a specialist inspection and treat every published number as a claim. We have not driven it, so use the sources and a proper inspection to decide.