Bentley

Which Bentley to Pick

A Bentley rental here is a choice between 2 versions of the same convertible, so the decision is about the day rather than the car. Rent a Bentley for a coast drive, an anniversary, a groom's arrival or a roof-down photo day, and the Continental GTC is the car. The GTC First Edition is the launch version of the same car, and the difference is badging rather than character, so pick by color and by date. It is the luxury car rental people book for how it feels.

What you are choosing either way is the drive. Road testers call the Continental GTC a lottery-win dream car, and the phrase they use for the way it moves is that it floats along, sighing in time with the road. The roof is a multi-layer cloth hood that opens in under 20 seconds on the move at up to 30 mph. Roof up, the cabin is within 1 decibel of the hardtop coupe. Roof down at 70 mph with the deflector in place, there is enough wind to rustle your hair, and you can hold a conversation.

The cabin is the reason people book it twice. Real metal organ-stop vents you push and pull. A rotating display in the center of the dash, one face a screen, one face 3 analogue dials, one face plain veneer, at the press of a button. Seats you sink into rather than sit on, heated, with a neck warmer blowing from the headrest so a January evening on the coast with the top down is a comfortable idea rather than a brave one.

What it is not is a luggage car or a 4-seat car. The trunk is small, and the back seats suit children or bags rather than 2 more adults.

What a Bentley Says

If Rolls Royce is Prince Philip, Bentley is Prince Harry. Still extremely well schooled, more agile, and with a younger vibe. A Bentley reads as working wealth, earned rather than inherited, and it reads as a car the owner drives himself. You are treated as someone arriving, not someone being delivered. It is hand-built in Crewe, and road testers put its interiors a cut above anything German or Italian.

The unflattering read is footballer's car, or the Will.i.am end of British luxury rather than the Will and Kate end. On the coast in Southern California, with the roof down, that read mostly evaporates. A Continental GTC at a Laguna Beach valet stand looks like it is exactly where it should be.

Where the Feeling Comes From

Bentley's own phrase for the design is a tiger at rest. Under it the mechanism is tuned toward comfort first. Active anti-roll bars decouple entirely when you drive in a straight line, for a more fluid ride, and reconnect in 0.3 of a second when you turn in. The climate system reads the sat-nav and switches to recirculation 10 seconds before you enter a tunnel. Laminated acoustic glass takes 9 decibels off the outside world.

The craft is deliberately human. You can find stitching on the leather that is not laser straight, because a person did it. You smell the cabin before you touch it, leather and wood and wool. The default drive mode is not Comfort or Sport but a setting called Bentley, which is the one that suits the car. In Sport the engine burbles and pops gently on the overrun, and in Comfort it all but disappears. Hidden in the console between the back seats there is an Allen key for winding the roof shut by hand.

Bentley Rentals Across Southern California

A Continental GTC belongs on the coast. Pacific Coast Highway from Dana Point up through Laguna and Newport with the roof down and the seat heaters on is the whole reason the car exists, and the same goes for Malibu. It belongs at a wine-country lunch in Temecula, and outside a Rancho Santa Fe wedding as the groom's car or the getaway car. Bentley rentals are booked for anniversaries, birthdays and photo days more than for canyon runs.

We deliver Bentleys across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire and Palm Springs, to hotels, residences, venues and the curb at LAX, SNA, BUR, LGB, ONT, SAN and PSP, with a caveat. The trunk is small, so for an airport arrival with real luggage it is the wrong car. Bentley rentals run from $595 to $795 a day depending on the car and the date, and multi-day and weekly rates take the daily price down.

Drive a Bentley

A Continental GTC is a heavy car and it never pretends otherwise. It glides over road scars, speed humps and dips, and in Comfort the ride goes pillowy enough that road testers warn against driving it after lunch. The brake pedal will occasionally move under your foot as the car pre-loads for a junction it can see coming. Full throttle on a straight road lifts the nose like a powerboat coming onto the plane, and then the horizon comes at you faster than a car this comfortable has any business managing.

Roof down at speed you can talk at normal volume. The right way to drive it is the way a road tester described it, like arriving at an extravagant buffet and taking less greedy portions so you can enjoy the company. Public roads only. Track use is not permitted.