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Given Bentley's profile, it should come as no surprise to discover that it plays by different rules. After all, the very rich can create their own playing field, so why should the companies which make their toys be any different?
So while most vehicles go through frequent lifecycle
changes - often annually for the likes of sporting motorcycles, or for more plebeian manufactures of bread-and-butter cars, every three or four years - Bentleys live serenely on and on.
So a new one is big news. Bentley's Continental, smaller, funkier and sportier than the Arnage aircraft carrier that tops the range, made headlines when it was launched.
Motoring journalists eagerly awaited the four-door Flying Spur version of the same car, while well-heeled buyers not old enough or rich enough for the Arnage did the same.
And now there's the topless Continental, with its rather pedestrian GTC tag.
Take in those sleek blue lines, the deep wedge of gleaming metal evoking 1930s style with that rich depth of a tub filled with glowing woods, buttery leathers, and you're sent straight to Cannes or Monte Carlo.
There's a starlet on your arm and a private jet in your drive, for this car suggests just one thing - glamour.
Forget the old-money whiff of the bigger cars, the almost embarrassed nouveau riche of the coupe. The GTC says: if you've got it, show it off.
Yet it gets away with it, because despite putting all that excess on public display, the car has style.
It also has considerable substance, adding 100kg to an already hefty weight to take the total to 2495kg. That's more than a Range Rover Sport V8 and accounts for the car's outrageous thirst.
It's the extra bracing needed to retain stiffness without the roof that's added that weight.
After all, a Bentley must not vibrate when driven. Hence the reinforced sills and the braces beneath the cabin. Hence the sturdy strengthened steel tubing around the windscreen and the better mountings for the rear subframe.
There have also been changes to the rear suspension to free up a bit of space to stow that roof.
The basic set-up is the same as the coupe, a four-link arrangement at the front and a trapezoidal multi-link rear, with computer-controlled air springs and electrically controlled shock absorbers instead of conventional coils.
But the damper has been lowered 210mm and mounts to a new lower link, with an aluminium-cast mounting to hold it firmly in place.
Thus the space for this roof, a triple-layer, seven-bow fabric affair with a heated rear screen and even an interior light, that folds silently away at speeds under 30km/h.
It's a masterful creation, not least because the car's roof-up lines are not a compromise, the low profile only emphasising the GTC's sporty feel, its 1930s glamour persona.
It's pretty useful glamour. Extensive wind tunnel work ensured aerodynamic stability at speeds over 300km/h - yes, find a German autobahn and the GTC should hit 306km/h with the roof folded, a tad more with it up.
With the roof in place you revert to a more traditional Bentley flavour, for it's still impressively quiet inside. You can almost hear the fuel glugging down those pipes as you prod that throttle.
There's still the rather good 6-litre W12 engine under the bonnet, embellished with its pair of Borg Warner turbochargers.
It still puts out 411kW at 6100rpm and 650Nm at 1600rpm to all four wheels via a six-speed ZF auto gearbox, and somehow still takes the car to a claimed 5.1-second zero to 100km/h time despite the weight - rather good for a car this hefty.
The penalty is its thirst, with a claimed combined figure of 17.1 litres/100km, and a round-town thirst of 26.2 litres for every 100km travelled.
Clearly, if you can afford $450,000 - $100,000 more than the coupe - you won't be worrying about the fuel bill.
Or the scenic flights, which is no doubt why Bentley flew us to the Sydney launch location by float plane, taking off from some swanky waterside restaurant and landing at another, the sun shining on beach umbrellas and glinting off blue sea fringed by golden beaches that set off to perfection the Bentley's casual elegance.
The interior is instantly recognisable as a Continental, the controls are the same, though the wuffle from the engine has a fresh immediacy thanks to Bentley's petrolhead engineers, who fitted a valve that opens at idle, or under hard acceleration, to give a more purposeful, loin-melting note from those 12 cylinders.
Leaving the envy of Sydney's beachside idle rich behind, we headed for them thar hills - not this car's home territory, despite its manifest talents.
But we were following the new, more powerful Arnage, its almost 6m length and plush suspenders severely outclassed by the tight bends in this road.
In comparison, the GTC felt almost nimble. It certainly felt impressively stiff, with barely a hint of scuttle shake on even the bumpiest surfaces, as you'd expect from a Bentley.
For most cars, chopping the top makes for compromise in the looks when the fabric roof rises.
But Bentley isn't at home to compromise, and the GTC is as complete a car in its own right as the coupe on which it is based.
