Bentley Continental GT Coloring Page: Printable Sheet

Bentley Continental GT: Grand Touring Heritage and British Craftsmanship

Bentley's History from Le Mans to Crewe

Bentley Motors was founded by Walter Owen Bentley in London in 1919. W.O. Bentley — as he was universally known — had made his name designing aircraft engines during World War One and brought the same focus on reliability, power, and engineering precision to his automobiles. The early Bentleys were large, powerful cars designed to be driven fast over long distances, and they proved their durability by winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times between 1924 and 1930. Those victories, led by a group of wealthy amateur racing drivers known as the Bentley Boys, established the brand's association with performance and endurance that it still carries today.

Rolls-Royce acquired Bentley in 1931 after W.O. Bentley's original company ran into financial difficulties during the Great Depression. Production moved to Crewe, England, in 1946, where it has remained ever since. Volkswagen Group purchased the Bentley brand from Vickers in 1998 and invested heavily in modernizing production while preserving the hand-finishing traditions that distinguished Bentley interiors from any other car in the world.

The Continental GT's Launch in 2003 and Its Significance

The Continental GT that went on sale in 2003 was a defining moment for Bentley. It used the Volkswagen Group's shared platform and engineering but was designed, developed, and hand-finished in Crewe. The W12 engine — shared in modified form with the Volkswagen Phaeton — gave the GT 552 horsepower and a top speed of 198 mph, making it one of the fastest four-seat production cars available at launch. The price, starting around $150,000, was high by any standard but dramatically lower than previous Bentleys, bringing the brand within reach of a broader group of buyers.

The Continental GT's timing was deliberate. Volkswagen Group CEO Ferdinand Piëch wanted to reposition Bentley as a volume-relevant luxury brand rather than a near-custom coachbuilder producing only a few hundred cars per year. The GT gave Bentley a car it could sell in the thousands annually, funding the investment needed to develop new models and maintain the Crewe factory's workforce of trained craftspeople.

Hand-Crafted Interior and the Diamond Knurl Pattern

Each Bentley Continental GT interior requires more than 100 hours of hand work to complete. Craftspeople in Crewe cut, stitch, and hand-weld leather hides from selected cattle farms in Scandinavia — where barbed wire is not used for fencing, avoiding the hide punctures that would reduce usable material. A full interior uses approximately 10 to 15 hides depending on the specification. The diamond-quilted seat pattern, which requires a leather worker to hand-stitch hundreds of precisely spaced diamond shapes, is one of the most labor-intensive options available and takes a single skilled worker several days to complete for one car.

The wood veneer dashboard — available in dozens of species including piano black lacquer, open-pore walnut, dark fiddleback eucalyptus, and Koa — is bookmatched, meaning the veneer is sliced from the same timber and paired as mirror images so the grain pattern reflects symmetrically across the center of the dashboard. Matching the grain precisely requires a craftsperson to select veneers by eye and position each piece manually before bonding it to the substrate.

The Oval Matrix Grille and Bentley Design Language

The oval matrix grille — the wide, rounded front opening with a fine mesh screen divided by a central vertical bar — is the most immediately recognizable element of any modern Bentley. The shape traces back to early Bentley racing cars of the 1920s, where the oval radiator housing became a brand signature. The modern interpretation, designed under Director of Design Stefan Sielaff for the third-generation Continental GT in 2018, is wider and lower than its predecessors, giving the car a more horizontal emphasis that reads as stability and presence rather than the tall upright look common in earlier models.

The round headlights flanking the grille also carry historical resonance — early Bentleys used circular acetylene lamps, and the round form has been maintained as a visual constant through various design generations. In the third-generation GT, the round headlights use LED matrix technology with 200 individual LED elements that can selectively deactivate segments to avoid blinding oncoming drivers while maintaining full illumination of the road ahead.