The Continental GT Azure is a Bentley for the relaxed driver, in mind, body and spirit

When reading about a super luxury conveyance such as the Bentley Continental GT Azure, one expects to find prose heavy with superlatives and over-stuffed with anecdotal insight into what makes this such a successfully sybaritic experience.

These days, the GT range is very much Bentley’s bread and butter, a model with a broad bandwidth of capabilities and configurations. The Crewe-based company, part of the Volkswagen Group, leans hard and forcefully into the infinite realm of personalisation, and the GT is no exception.

Right now, the GT is available in five distinct flavours, ‘basic’, Mulliner, Speed, S and Azure, as well as the occasional special edition like the Supersports and the choice between coupé and GTC convertible. The options list is practically infinite, especially if you’re willing to engage Bentley’s Mulliner division to ramp up the depth, scope and duration of the commissioning process.

Bentley Continental GT Azure, the ‘wellness spec’

We recently took temporary delivery of a GT Azure, considered by Bentley to be the ‘wellness specification’ thanks to an increased emphasis on luxury and comfort instead of dynamism and performance. These differences are, in many ways, subtle, relying on insider knowledge and experience as well as the gentle power of suggestion. Azure conjures up sparkling seas, cloudless Mediterranean skies and a life of leisure, not south London in the depths of a wet winter.

Still, the cabin is a remarkable place to be, regardless of the specification. The model shown here, with its Light Windsor Blue coachwork and cream leather interior gives off quite different vibes to the duo-tone Burnt Oak leather and Open Pore Crown Cut Walnut veneer of the test car, which was resplendent in a seasonal Cricket Ball deep red. Gloss-black 22-inch wheels were another modern choice, but as the illustrations show, if you go in a more classical direction, the Azure is one of the best-looking of all GT variants.

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On the road in the Bentley Continental GT Azure

On the road in the Bentley Continental GT Azure

On the road in the Bentley Continental GT Azure

Partly this is due to the timeless combination of blue coachwork and silver brightwork. The Azure has a unique and distinctive grille featuring bold vertical elements, although this jars slightly with the mesh covered the broad air intakes below it and beneath the headlights.

The relatively simple forms make the most of the new style headlights, introduced with the current generation of GT to move away from the twin headlight approach of the earlier cars. The subtle creases and folds in the GT’s flanks are also better served by a light colour that allows the references to earlier post-war models to really shine through.

Inside, the degrees of difference between a Speed, S and Azure model are harder to quantify for the unfamiliar. The car’s drive systems are marginally softer and less aggressive than in the more punchily tuned performance models but make no mistake whatsoever – this is still an extremely capable and fast machine.

It’s true that the headline statistic – a top speed of 168 mph – seems wildly off the pace when compared to the Speed, which adds another 100bhp to the Azure’s 671bhp and can achieve an otherworldly 208 mph.

For those that care passionately about the numbers, perhaps the Azure feels lacking. In the real world, it matters not one jot. The sprint time set by this four-wheeled wellness wonder – 3.5 seconds to 62mph – is more than respectable given that the Speed can only best that by 0.4 seconds.

If you’re that concerned about chasing down this imperceptible fraction then you’re almost certainly not on a path to self-fulfilment. Far better to just enjoy the ride. The GT has always handled in a way that belies its scale and newer generations have got better and better in the way they feel planted, supple and dynamically capable.

In any case, it’s not really a car to throw about. Instead, it’s best to revel in what the Azure does best – long-distance, high-comfort travel. Like all GTs it combines a V8 with a high-performance hybrid system. The latter is good for 40-50 miles of pure electric travel, with the V8 capable of coming to life quietly and unobtrusively when needed. Given the heft and scale of the GT, the added weight of such a system is negligible; in a car such as this, it really does provide the best of both worlds.

Bentley’s approach to dashboard design has also aged extremely well, with a modest touchscreen comprehensively outflanked by an array of tactile, hand-finished buttons, dials, stalks and ‘organ stop’ style ventilation controls. We’d wager that the LoveFrom team took a close look at Bentley’s approach when fashioning the dashboard of the forthcoming Ferrari Luce, an object lesson in how to preserve heritage and tradition without compromising on function and technology.

So is the Azure a soft option in the hard-nosed world of luxury bragging rights? Perhaps. But it’s also a welcome demonstration that not everything has to be dialled up to the max, all the time, to signify status. Spot an Azure in the wild and more likely than not, you’re seeing self-assurance in action.

Bentley Continental GT Azure, price as tested £244,300, BentleyMotors.com, @BentleyMotors