Tag Archives: vehicles

How a Tiny Mountain State Became Porsche’s Wildest Playground

If you were asked to guess where the Porsche 911 sells better than any other car, you’d probably say Southern California, Monaco, or maybe a leafy corner of Switzerland. You would not say Andorra—a tiny mountain principality wedged between France and Spain with fewer residents than a medium-sized European suburb.

And yet, here we are.

In 2025, Andorra registered 86 new Porsche 911s, making it the best-selling car in the entire country. Not the best-selling sports car. Not the best-selling luxury coupe. The best-selling car, period – beating Toyota, Hyundai and all the other brands that usually dominate European sales charts.

In a market that sells fewer than 2,500 new cars per year, that figure is as surreal as seeing a GT3 parked at a grocery store. But in Andorra, it makes perfect sense.

The Monaco of the Pyrenees

Andorra’s reputation is built on three things: skiing, mountains, and taxes—or more precisely, the lack of them. With one of Europe’s most favorable tax systems, the country attracts wealthy residents, professional athletes, digital nomads, and business owners who like their income lightly taxed and their garages heavily stocked.

The result is a new-car market that behaves like nothing else in Europe.

Where most countries revolve around subcompact hatchbacks and budget crossovers, Andorra’s streets are dominated by performance cars, luxury SUVs, and six-figure toys. The Porsche 911 isn’t a weekend indulgence here—it’s a daily driver.

When you live in a compact, affluent, mountain-road-rich country with minimal traffic and a healthy number of racetrack-quality passes, the idea of commuting in a 911 starts to feel downright logical.

A Sports Car Beats the Sensible Stuff

That the 911 topped the chart at all is astonishing. That it did so again in 2025—growing from 83 to 86 registrations—feels almost absurd.

To put that in context: the Toyota Yaris Cross, a practical, sensible, fuel-efficient compact SUV, finished second with 63 sales. The Seat Arona, Spain’s affordable home-team crossover, came third with 57.

Those are the kinds of cars that lead sales in normal countries.

Andorra, meanwhile, chose a rear-engine German sports car that can cost as much as €340,000.

Last year, Porsche’s dominance was even more extreme, with the Cayenne and Macan also beating mainstream superminis. In 2025, the lead is slimmer—but the symbolism remains staggering: a 911 still outsells everything.

Brand Rankings from an Alternate Reality

Even stranger than the model rankings is the brand leaderboard.

Despite not placing a single car in the top 10, BMW was Andorra’s best-selling brand with 204 registrations, narrowly beating Mercedes (200).

Toyota, Ford, and Hyundai followed, but the real jaw-dropper comes further down the list:

Ferrari sold 56 cars in Andorra in 2025.

That’s more than one Ferrari per 1,500 residents.

For comparison, Spain—a country of 48 million people—registered just 109 new Ferraris in the same year. In other words, Andorra bought more than half as many Ferraris with one-five-hundredth the population.

That’s not a market anomaly. That’s a statistical mic drop.

What Andorra Tells Us About Cars and Money

Andorra is what happens when geography, wealth, and tax policy collide in a small, dense, car-friendly bubble. People who move there don’t need economical transportation—they need something entertaining to drive between ski resorts, cafés, and mountain villas.

And if you’re going to buy one perfect all-around sports car, the Porsche 911 still makes more sense than almost anything else on the road. It’s fast, usable, reliable, comfortable, and endlessly configurable. In Andorra, it isn’t just a status symbol—it’s the default choice.

Everywhere else, the 911 is a dream car.

In Andorra, it’s just what you buy when you need to go shopping.

Source: Porsche

Bentley Continental GT S and GT Convertible S

Bentley has never been shy about mixing indulgence with insanity, but the new Continental GT S and GTC S lean harder into the latter than any “S” model before them. Inspired by the ferocious, limited-run Supersports, these new mid-range heavy hitters now land in the sweet spot between the refined Azure and the full-fat Speed—only now they bring hybrid firepower and the most aggressive chassis ever bolted under a Continental badge.

GT Convertible S

Under the hood sits Bentley’s new High Performance Hybrid, pairing a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with an electric motor for a combined 680 horsepower and 930 Nm of torque. That’s 130 more horses than the outgoing GT S—and, crucially, it actually outguns the old W-12–powered Speed. Zero to 60 mph takes just 3.3 seconds, and the car doesn’t stop pulling until 190 mph. For a coupe that weighs about as much as a moon, that’s deeply unsettling—in a good way.

Even more shocking is the electric-only range: up to 50 miles. So yes, the same Bentley that can run with supercars can also quietly creep through a city center on electrons alone, like a billionaire ninja.

But the real story isn’t just the powertrain—it’s the hardware beneath it. For the first time, the GT S gets the full Bentley Performance Active Chassis previously reserved for the Speed and Mulliner models. That means active all-wheel drive, rear-wheel steering, a 48-volt active anti-roll system, torque vectoring, twin-valve adaptive dampers, and—finally—an electronic limited-slip differential. This is Bentley’s most sophisticated setup ever, and it transforms the Continental from a continent crusher into something that actually wants to be hustled.

In Dynamic mode, the stability control loosens the leash just enough to let the rear step out, giving the driver real control over cornering attitude. Turn ESC all the way off, and the GT S becomes a 5000-pound physics experiment you can steer with the throttle. That’s not something you’d ever say about a traditional Bentley—and that’s exactly the point.

Visually, the GT S makes sure no one mistakes it for the polite one. The Blackline Specification blacks out nearly everything that isn’t painted, from the grille and badges to the mirror caps and diffuser. Dark-tinted LED matrix headlights and taillights reinforce the menacing look, while standard 22-inch ten-spoke wheels fill the arches like they mean business. It’s less “country club” and more “midnight Monaco.”

Inside, Bentley continues the performance theme without forgetting its roots. The GT S gets a unique two-tone interior layout, fluted sport seats, and Dinamica microfiber on all the right touch points—the steering wheel, shifter, doors, and seats—giving the cabin a more motorsport-inspired feel than any Continental before it. Piano black trim comes standard, with carbon fiber available for those who want to lean even harder into the modern-super-GT vibe.

Continental GT S

The result is a Bentley that finally admits what everyone already knew: a 190-mph, V-8-hybrid grand tourer with rear-wheel steering has no business pretending to be subtle. The Continental GT S doesn’t replace the Speed—it offers a different flavor of madness, one that blends daily usability, long-distance comfort, and real driver engagement into something uniquely Bentley.

If the old Continental was a luxury cruise missile, the new GT S is a stealth fighter—quieter when it wants to be, louder when it needs to be, and far more agile than anyone expects.

And in Bentley’s world, that might just be the most dangerous thing of all.

Source: Bentley

Bentley Supersports Goes FULL SEND

Bentley doesn’t do low-key. And when the company wants to introduce a 666-horsepower, rear-wheel-drive monster called Supersports, it doesn’t roll it out in a quiet studio or at a polite press conference. It lights up the Burj Al Arab in Bentley green, invites 400 VIPs to a former royal palace, and has Travis Pastrana drift the thing across the company’s own factory like it’s auditioning for a Gymkhana sequel.

Yes, this is a real car launch—and yes, it happened in Dubai.

The Supersports made its EMEA debut at a Bentley-hosted spectacle that was equal parts Hollywood premiere and motorsports fever dream. The evening opened with a dramatic reveal of a launch car in Jetstream Matte with Arctica and Portofino livery, dubbed Daybreak, because when you’re Bentley, even your paint schemes have origin stories. Then, right on cue at 9:00 p.m., Bentley dropped its new stunt film, Supersports: FULL SEND, onto a 12-meter-wide screen and across the internet simultaneously.

Moments later, Pastrana himself rolled in behind the wheel of the same heavily modified Supersports he’d just used to turn Bentley’s historic Crewe factory into a tire-smoking playground. Subtle? Not remotely. Effective? Absolutely.

Pymkhana: Bentley’s Factory, Pastrana’s Playground

Shot at Bentley’s Pyms Lane headquarters—first opened in 1938—FULL SEND is essentially a luxury-brand remix of a Gymkhana video. Bentley calls it “Pymkhana,” which might be the most on-brand portmanteau ever invented.

Pastrana threads the Supersports through production halls, around buildings, and across the Dream Factory campus, turning a place known for hand-stitched leather and polished wood into a high-speed obstacle course. The message is clear: this isn’t your grandfather’s Bentley.

Underneath the spectacle sits a seriously aggressive machine. With 666 PS, rear-wheel drive, and a heavily reworked chassis and aero package, the new Supersports is aimed squarely at proving Bentley can build something that isn’t just fast in a straight line, but genuinely athletic. Think less gentleman’s express, more luxury-wrapped sledgehammer.

A New Bentley, in Every Sense

Bentley says the Dubai event was about more than just a car—it was about a new brand strategy. Christophe Georges, Bentley’s Board Member for Sales and Marketing, framed the evening as a blend of “authenticity, new ambassadors, extraordinary customers, and unexpected product stories.” Translation: Bentley is leaning harder into spectacle, personality, and performance than it ever has before.

The guest list reflected that shift. Nearly 100 Supersports customers were in attendance, rubbing shoulders with Pastrana, actor and Bentley ambassador Lucien Laviscount, and Bentley CEO Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser. And all of it unfolded in the gardens of a former royal palace, with one of the world’s most recognizable hotels glowing green in the background.

If Bentley wanted to signal that Supersports is something special, it did so with a megaphone.

When Can You Get One?

Order books for the Supersports open in March, with production scheduled to begin in Q4 2026 and first deliveries arriving in early 2027. It’ll be sold in key markets across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and parts of Asia-Pacific—basically anywhere Bentley’s most committed customers live and breathe horsepower.

Bentley’s Supersports isn’t just a new model—it’s a statement. A 666-horsepower, rear-drive, tire-shredding statement, delivered via a stunt film shot in a factory and premiered at a palace in Dubai. That’s not just a car launch; that’s Bentley telling the world it’s done playing it safe.

And if Travis Pastrana sideways-sliding a Bentley through its own production halls doesn’t convince you that this brand has entered a new era, nothing will.

Source: Bentley