Head-to-head: Bentley Continental GT vs Maserati GranTurismo Folgore

Somehow, elements of the car industry have convinced us that cars with the ride quality of tooth enamel on kerbstone are somehow ‘sporty’, equipped with too hard springs and dampers that don’t, that ‘fast’ is somehow wrapped around a core of discomfort. These two cars dispel that myth in the first 100 metres. 

Both ride with the kind of fluency and padding that soothes the sharp and gritty edges of UK roads, and then when you reach a quiet stretch, they’ll both show heels to all but the most committed of sports cars. They might not be the fastest around a track, but in a battle of wits when it comes to varied road driving, they make most cars look like lemons. They are grand tourers – all rounders in the world of fast cars. And they both have eponymous badges. The Bentley Continental GT and the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore.

Aha. One is a plug-in hybrid, the other electric, and therefore not the same. Which they aren’t. But as different takes on what makes a good GT, they represent something different – and quite special in their own ways. Of course, a grand tourer is all about compromise, but it’s the elegance of the arbitration that differentiates good from bad. You can do big, lumpen distance in a Porsche GT3 RS, but it won’t be comfortable and your arse will assume the shape of the carbon bucket seats.

Equally, you can fling a Rolls-Royce Phantom about on a mountain pass, but it’ll be like helming a 16th century galleon around Cape Wrath. Albeit with a better stereo. What we have here are a pair of beautiful negotiations between comfortable distance/daily travel and brain out speed. Both are two door, four seat (though not necessarily room for four sets of legs) coupes. Both have extraordinary power and torque, luxurious appointments, hefty weight and neither is cheap. They are the same, and yet not. 

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood

So let’s start with the Bentley. It’s the new PHEV V8, the easiest visual cue the fact that it now sports eyeliner around the headlights. It’s still got the razored, superformed creases in the bodywork, still got that Bentley face and big bodied look. It’s been to a sympathetic plastic surgeon and got some decent facelift work done. That’s very Bentley, the evo rather than revo of lutions. But the heavy lifting in this change is mostly under the skin.

The Maserati Folgore also looks like... a GranTurismo. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but it’s a car that wears itself so, so well. No pretension, very little to tell that it’s electric apart from a couple of badges and some specific wheels. Amazing, given that this is an electric car, whose tricksy engineering allows it to look normal. It can come with a twin-turbo V6 Nettuno petrol if you so wish, but it’s this Folgore EV that’s the most interesting. The battery has 83ish kWh of usable power. But it’s not sat under the car like most electric vehicles. It’s in what Maserati calls a “T bone”, that reclines across under the front bulkhead and back into what would be the transmission tunnel in a car with a drivetrain. Thus, you sit ‘into’ this GranTurismo as you would any other. It stands at 1,353mm tall, low for an EV, 44mm lower than the Continental. 

A fact that feeds into the handling balance. It’s got 50:50 weight distribution and it’s not that heavy for an EV at 2,260kg (65 per cent aluminium, but also uses magnesium and high strength steel, a platform designed to be modular and deal with both combustion and electric), but more natural roll centres from which to work. I’m not sure it produces more grip than a car with a more usual skateboard style pack, but it’s certainly more intuitive. More what we’re used to, and therefore more fun. And boy can it be fun. 

So the roads were a little greasy during the test, if not flat out ice slicked, but 750ish bhp of Corsa mode, instant on electric torque and nearly 1,000lb ft of torque spins the rear wheels at 70mph if you’re slapping the throttle and you’ve slept the traction control. It isn’t, however, as manic as it sounds. With three motors, this car is actually all wheel drive, even if it feels mostly rear. But that front motor can pull the car straight with 395bhp if it feels the need, thanks to clever maths and digital reaction times. 

So the Folgore can actually dispense horsepower as it sees fit. You can put the whole 750bhp down through just the rear axle, or up to 395bhp through a single rear wheel or the front motor, should some bizarre grip situation present itself. And with three motors, there’s opportunity to torque vector with more precision than just a single motor on each axle – you can literally get the car to turn harder, understeer less, balance the pitch and yaw. Get it wrong and it feels fake and disconnected. Get it right, and the car feels planted, secure and bizarrely grippy – especially at the front. Maserati has got it right. Yes, it gets a bit spicy when the ESP is slackened right off, and yes, the front will always try and pull itself straight eventually, but generally this feels more like a 911 Turbo than a GranTurismo. And that’s some high praise.

The Bentley, on the other hand, will immediately feel too soft when cruising. Relaxing as a warm bath and a Valium, yes, with Rolls levels of comfort. Something with this amount of compliance and squish can’t really perform when things get twisty. But when you stick it in Sport and heave the system power to everything on, it transforms. The steering might be a teeny bit slow, but accurate, the body control – so languid before – pretty good for such a big car. It always feels more four square, more all wheel drive than the Maserati, but flick it into a turn (and yes, I would describe it as a flick) and the car will attack an apex, spearing out the other side with a dash of power on oversteer. Jekyll, meet Hyde. 

And where the Folgore is quicker and more direct pretty much everywhere, there’s a glorious relentlessness to the Continental. The way the V8 kicks in like a distant thunderclap, the way it bullies the bejeezus out of a series of bends, the way it masks its weight when braking and transitioning. Geologically solid at speed. This feels like a Continental, looks like a Continental, but it’s got more chops than it ever had. It eclipses the last gen W12 by some margin, in all areas apart from literal numbers of cylinders. It even has a decent turning circle thanks to all wheel steer. It’s a revelation in Candy Red paint. 

Both, it has to be said, are fast enough. The Bentley manages 3.2 seconds to 62mph and rumbles on to 208mph. It’ll do it, too, faintly ridiculous as it is to see a Bentley just headbutting the horizon with a flare of wheelspin. The Folgore is half a second quicker than that, and can make passengers feel lightly ill. You think the Bentley’s brilliant meld of battery, V8 and eight speed box is sublime, but the GranTurismo is literally one speed seamless and if power corrupts, then this much torque corrupts absolutely. There is no overtaking opportunity marginal enough not to be made safe by the mid range. It’ll hit 201mph and the benchmark 62mph from rest in 2.7secs. That’s not just quick, it’s blazing.

The Bentley feels like the better fit when it comes down to being more of a grand tourer

But the good news isn’t just the looks and the performance, because both feel resolutely special inside. The Maserati blurs the line between old and new school, laser cut recycled fabrics, copper woven carbon fibre elements, new digital displays and that low slung seating position. It looks lovely, and feels like a stepchange for the company.

But the interior – pretty though it is – doesn’t quite hit the heights when you dig deeper. There’s a lightness to the volumes that doesn’t give the granite feel you get from the flying B, and the push button gear selector doesn’t suit it. Whoever approved the indicator noise that sounds like an old carriage clock needs to have a word, too. Small things, but when the rest of the car is so sorted, it matters. 

It doesn’t help that the Bentley has an almost heirloom quality to it that’s impossible to ignore. You’d spec a Continental to your preferred taste and then... just keep it. It’s got a heft and density, and even though the interior isn’t much changed from the previous version, it’s still a useful, intuitive place. It’s not all gravy though – both have surprisingly small boots, and even though the rear seats in the Bentley have more headroom than the Maserati, neither are places you want to spend time as an adult.

So what’s the verdict on these two very different grand tourers? Well, one elephant in the room is the very idea of touring. And it comes down to range. We can safely ignore the optimistic 279 miles of official WLTP nonsense, but in the freezing cold and with some chunky right hand footwork, the Folgore delivered 1.9mpkWh. That’s about 160 miles. Which isn’t enough for genuine ease of use on a long trip, since you can’t arrive at a charger with zero per cent. 

The Bentley, for reference, has an 80 litre fuel tank and a 50 mile battery. So you’re looking at 534 miles of convenience all told (less if you clog it, obviously), albeit with £125ish fill up with super. On my home charger, the Folgore cost (at peak), £7.43 to fill for, say, a real 240 miles if you’re pottering. That’s... worth contemplating, no matter your disposable.

What that means is that the Bentley feels like the better fit when it comes down to being more of a grand tourer. Ease of use, a tastefully dichotomous personality. It’s absolutely brilliant at being the best Bentley GT it can be, and that’s a very good car indeed. The mix of sporting ability and laidback comfort (helped by that EV support) intensely satisfying, the compromises we mentioned judged to perfection. It really is that good. 

But the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore is also exceptional in that it has managed to reframe what a GranTurismo actually is, in terms of the Maserati model, rather than the type of car. It’s fast, fun, sober and stylish – grown up and electric, in a way that entirely suits the brand. And there’s room for more – the installed motors are capable of 1,200bhp, so a Trofeo Corsa or ‘Furioso’ variant would tempt. It’s more of a daily than a sports car – and the better for it – but not quite an electric GT. Yet. 

So it’s a Bentley win this time, by a genteel, steel coated whisker.