Bentley decided to honor the 2003 Speed 8’s Le Mans victory with a limited edition Continental Speed, but despite its best efforts, it can’t keep up with the 20-year-old racecar
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Bentley won’t shut up about its Le Mans history, even though the majority of its wins came nearly a hundred years ago. However, the company has won the world’s most legendary endurance race once this millennium, and it decided to honor the 20th anniversary of that achievement with a new limited edition of the Continental GT.
Dubbed the Bentley Continental GT Speed Le Mans Edition, the limited-production model was produced in just 48 examples and is powered by a 6.0-liter W12 engine that makes 650 hp (485 kW / 659 PS) and 664 lb-ft (990 Nm) of torque.
Surprisingly, that’s more cylinders and more power than the racecar it is designed to honor. The Bentley Speed 8 won Le Mans in 2003 with the help of a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 that makes just 592 hp (441 kW/600 PS).
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Read: Bentley’s Continental Le Mans Collection Comes With Part Of A Real Race Car
However, the LeMans winner is significantly lighter than the Continental GT Speed. In fact, tipping the scales at just 950 kg (2,094 lbs), it weighs less than half as much as the road car, which weighs in at 2,200 kg (4,850 lbs).
That weight differential should more than make up for the power deficit against the Continental GT Speed, should you ever find yourself drag racing the two — which is exactly what happened to CarWow’s Mat Watson in a recent video.
In a rolling race that started at 50 mph (87 km/h), the Bentley Speed 8 ran away from its luxurious younger sibling. Such was the gap that Watson revised the race format to allow himself to start in second gear, rather than third, and still lost by a wide margin.
Even when he gave himself a head start of several feet, the Le Mans racer caught and passed the Continental GT before the half-mile had elapsed, but only just. And that should hardly come as a surprise, since the Bentley Speed 8 was designed for Le Mans’ Mulsanne straight.
Even in the standing quarter-mile, where the Bentley Speed 8 is its trickiest to handle (and which it was never really designed to be a master of), the 20-year-old racecar easily beats the road car.
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