2010 Bentley Continental GT Speed Series 51

It's amazing how slipping into the driver's seat of a really fancy car can make your cares wash away. I had a pretty bad head cold when I piloted the Series 51, but the Bentley cured me, if only briefly. In a perfect world, my doctor could prescribe a Bentley and my insurance would cover everything but a $20 copay ... I know this Continental is old and outdated (good grief, look at those terrible navigation graphics!), but the more I drove this one, the more I loved it. The quilted leather door panels and seats are succulent, as are the rich leather on the wheel and the headliner. Everything is extremely well wrought. The exhaust note was surprisingly impressive, too, and the twelve-cylinder engine emits a wonderful back-pressure burble almost like a Shelby Mustang or a Dodge Viper. By the way, Joe: there is a holster for that optional (and beautiful) $290 Mulliner fuel cap; it's a small plastic hook, sized perfectly for the cap's tether, at the top of the vertically swinging fuel door. A different detail of the Conti perplexed me, though: when you turn off the car, it instructs you to push and hold the start button to lock the steering wheel. I could not, for the life of me, manage to get this feature to work. I just kept restarting the vehicle. Oh well. Rusty Blackwell, Copy Editor