Auto News 5

Back when I went away to college, my folks said something to the effect of, "Bye! See ya!" And that was that. But now that my eldest son and first child, Ike Clemente Kitman, is going away to school, I find myself feeling sad and not a little bit old. He doesn't leave for a week as I write, and yet I miss him already. Fortunately, he's not going far. And at least his car will be here at home to remember him by.

When the V-8-powered Bentley Continental GT rolled out earlier this year, critics pointed out that the V-8's smooth brutishness rendered the W-12 sort of superfluous. The secret sauce is the transmission, since the 500-horsepower V-8 uses the new ZF eight-speed while the 567-horsepower W-12 is bolted to an older six-speed. Nonetheless, rationality is apparently not a huge factor in dream-car purchase decisions, since so far this year 70 percent of Continental GT buyers have gone for the W-12. Even allowing for a head start (the V-8 wasn't immediately available earlier in the year), it appears the V-8 might be seen as too close a relative to proletarian machinery like the Audi S8. I guess when you're spending Bentley GT money, you want the price to include that signature off-kilter W-12 thrum that seems to emanate from grinding tectonic plates on some distant fault line.