Bentley’s latest one-off Continental GTC is a ‘composed’ piece, created not by a single designer’s pen but by the combined sensibilities of three women whose careers revolve around sound.
Celebrated organist and conductor Anna Lapwood MBE, Grammy-nominated cellist and composer Tina Guo, and Sister Bliss of Faithless collaborated with Bentley’s Mulliner division to design a Continental GTC that translates musical identity into color, texture, and detail. It forms what Bentley describes as “one harmonious whole.”
The car’s public debut is set for International Women’s Day at a female-focused cars-and-coffee event at Bicester Motion, staged with What She Drives. It is an apt setting for a car conceived as a shared vision. Bentley also notes that two leading female design consultants from Mulliner were at the forefront of the project, helping translate three distinct artistic worlds into a coherent specification.
The trio chose a satin finish in Peacock Satin, then sharpened it with an exterior fine line in Tornado Red, applied to the gloss-black front bumper’s lower edge and the rear diffuser.
The Tornado Red appears again as a satin accent on the wing mirrors, complemented by red brake calipers. Even the 22-inch ten-spoke wheels carry the theme, with Peacock Satin in the pockets set against bright-machined faces.
Inside, the color story deepens, built on contrast and repetition. The palette begins with Imperial Blue, chosen to align with the exterior, then plays against Pillar Box Red accents and a gold accent hide.
Contrast stitching in Imperial Blue, Pillar Box Red, and gold thread punctuates key areas, while details typically left to chrome, such as the headrest bezels, are finished in Imperial Blue Satin so they blend into the leatherwork. Pillar Box Red returns in the inner dials of the Bentley Rotating Display. The cabin’s audio follows suit, with speaker grilles anodized in Gold and Beluga.
Each artist left a distinct imprint. Guo selected the fascia’s Copper Stone veneer, a real-stone finish only 0.6 mm thick, chosen for its connection to an aesthetic “hundreds of thousands of years in the making,” and for how naturally its red-and-gold tones sit within the cabin’s scheme.
Sister Bliss introduced what Bentley describes as a first for the brand: a soundwave embroidery design. It is stitched “blind” in Imperial Blue thread across seats and doors, and in contrast Pillar Box Red thread on the tonneau cover. The motif appears on the treadplates too, and it becomes kinetic when the doors open, projected to the ground in animated form.
Lapwood’s contribution is the most poetic. Bentley’s air-vent controls are known as “Organ Stops,” a nod to their tactile, linear action, and here they are finished in 24K gold, turning a familiar cabin detail into a gleaming highlight.
The final flourish sits in the center console: a polished stainless-steel plaque bearing the trio’s laser-engraved signatures and a Spotify code linking to a bespoke playlist curated by Lapwood, Guo, and Sister Bliss, designed to be played through the car’s Bang & Olufsen sound system.
After its debut, the Continental GTC will join Bentley’s UK press fleet for some time before being sold. No prices for guessing it'll likely command a significant premium.
