If you can't swing a Bentley Continental, a Genesis GV60 might just do the trick. It's neither a secret nor a particularly controversial opinion, but I think Bentley makes the best cars in the world right now. Pick your angle from which to judge: performance, quality, styling, comfort, refinement, durability, or customization; a Bentley Continental GT or Flying Spur will be not just good or great, but exceptional.
Even the Bentayga, mostly unloved by the sports-car set, told Range Rover, "Hold my beer," and broke the $300,000 SUV glass ceiling. Though you may not like how it looks, there is virtually nothing a Bentayga won't do fantastically well. Equally obvious is that all this greatness comes at a cost. These cars are comically expensive to buy new, with six-figure MSRPs now beginning with a three or a four rather than a one or a two.
I had 1300 miles to drive in six days for our Desert Run 600; 250 transit miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for the start, 650 miles leading a pack of sports cars all over the high desert's best roads, and then 400 to get home from Scottsdale, Arizona. Maybe I could approximate Bentley in a way that you, dear reader, might find interesting? Which leads me to the 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack Coupe, the last big personal luxury coupe to be built on these shores.
View Price on AmazonI had seen another journalist driving one on the Angeles Crest Highway recently and thought, "Hey, maybe that could be the perfect budget Bentley." For just around $60,000, you get a twin-turbo Hurricane inline-six with 550 horsepower, all-wheel drive, and an eight-speed automatic gearbox, plus seating for four full-size humans. No one does whimsy like Dodge, so there's also a pistol-grip shifter, proper throwback styling, and a cartoon on the side, plus a fun color name; I had requested Bludicrous but they sent Destroyer, which, in fairness, is the best name I've heard for drab-ass gray.
The new styling references, pretty well, the 1968–70 Charger aesthetic but fails to fully mask its obvious 59-inch height and 4800-lb girth. Don't park it next to a real sports car unless you want a laugh. At least size does lead to interior space—on top of ample room for legs, shoulders, and heads, the Charger offers a rear window design that masks a clever hatchback that will swallow everyone's luggage or even four sets of golf clubs.
It's exciting to see the resurgence of the inline-six over the last few years. Mercedes, BMW, Land Rover, Mazda, and now Stellantis offer them, and I was interested to see how Dodge tuned it in a sporting manner. On paper, it was promising, with 531 lb-ft accompanying that 550 horsepower, more than the BMW M4 CS and allegedly capable of hustling the Scat Pack to 60 mph in under four seconds.
My favorite inline-sixes, the RB-series Nissans, the Toyota JZ, and nearly all BMWs before 2006, all have single-exit exhausts, which provide a lovely, smooth, even tone. But the Charger, like the current M3/4, has a dual exhaust and makes equally unpleasant sounds, droning when moving around the city at low speeds and grumbling in the midrange. You can hear the cold start from blocks away, and it's not a sound your neighbors will appreciate.
Source: roadandtrack.com
