New Porsche 911 versus used Bentley Continental GT - comparison

You can sit in miserable traffic in absolute comfort and refinement, apart from an unnecessarily heavy clutch on the seven-speed manual gearbox, and then open it up on the right road and enjoy instant access to the sort of fingertip precision that you’d generally associate with vastly more single-minded sports cars.

Yes, even with optional £558 adaptive dampers and standard 20in alloy wheels, it’s a much more abrupt ride quality than the cushy-feeling Bentley, and it’s certainly hard enough to induce the odd wince over sharp-edged or mid-corner bumps. But the pay-off is that you feel keyed in to its responses.

You know intuitively just how much lock to apply to hit that apex, the precise moment you can feed power back in,and the exact level of pressure you need on the brakes as you go into the corner. It speaks to the soul, the 911, and there’s not a moment where it’s not obvious that it is the more poised, better-handling car here.

Then there’s the engine – that unique, metallic-sounding wail, the addictive building of pace as the needle climbs the rev range. For many, the heady shove of low-down torque you get in the Bentley will be more of a kick to use at normal road speeds, but the elastic, long-revving crescendo of the 911’s motor is the more satisfying in white-eyed driving. 

So that’s the two distinctly different characters we’re dealing with. But it’s not just a question of whether you want the pointier-feeling, faster car in the shape of the 911, or the evocative sports-cruiser that the Bentley embodies so brilliantly. There’s money to think about, too. 

The Bentley you see here is from the company’s official Pre-Owned service, which doesn’t just mean free coffee and a handshake but also includes an unlimited-mileage, three-year warranty, factory tour and invites to the same Bentley owner events that anyone buying new model would get.

Porsche goes one better, matching the three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty and including three years’ European roadside assistance and half a day’s driving tuition at Silverstone.

The Porsche is also cheaper to service, at £1360 for four years as a basic price, which makes the Bentley’s £95 per month fixed-price set-up look expensive, even if it does bring a certain peace of mind that many buying in this stratosphere will cheerfully pay for.

The used Conti’s biggest financial advantage is, of course, that it has already taken its initial hit of depreciation: £35,000 of it since 2012. This makes it around £5k cheaper to buy initially and, if the crystal ball of value expert CAP is to be believed, it’ll lose a mere £41k next to the 911’s forecasted drop of £53k over three years and 30,000 miles.

All of which means that both promise fair ownership prospects and remarkably similar costs, despite one being new and the other used.

With that reassurance, the maths hasn’t been overly helpful in solving The Question. So which car is better? It’s the Porsche, because nothing else has quite the same remarkable breadth of ability and, on most objective fronts, it is the more accomplished car. But if you were to ask which car I’d take home and live with, I’d take the Bentley.

I’d maybe regret it when I found myself on a really good road with about 500kg more than I wanted, but the rest of the time I’d be feeling smug. Really smug. 

Read the previous test - new BMW M4 versus used Ferrari 612 Scaglietti

New versus used cars - which is best?

Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS

Price today £95,862; Price when new £95,862; Engine 6 cyls horizontally opposed, 3800cc, petrol; Power 424bhp at 7500rpm; Torque 325lb ft at 5750rpm; Gearbox 7-spd manual; Kerb weight 1545kg; 0-60mph 4.4sec; Top speed 188mph; Economy 28.5mpg; CO2/tax band 233g/km / 35%

Bentley Continental GT V8 (2013)

Price today £89,850; Price when new £125,000; Engine V8, 3993cc, twin-turbo, petrol; Power 500bhp at 6000rpm; Torque 487b ft at 1700rpm; Gearbox 8-spd automatic; Kerb weight 2295kg; 0-60mph 4.8sec; Top speed 188mph; Economy 26.7mpg; CO2/tax band 246g/km / 35%