Bentley Motors has completed work on a bespoke Continental GTC unlike anything previously built at its Crewe headquarters. The car, conceived and co-designed by celebrated organist and conductor Anna Lapwood MBE, Grammy-nominated cellist Tina Guo and Sister Bliss, the founding musician of the legendary British dance act Faithless, is the product of a creative process that began when all three artists visited Bentley’s campus in March 2025. Working directly with female design consultants from Mulliner, the company’s bespoke and coachbuilding division, they translated the full breadth of their musical careers into a single, cohesive object.

The finished car made its public debut on International Women’s Day at Bicester Motion, at a female-focused cars and coffee event organised in conjunction with What She Drives. The timing was deliberate. Each of the three women has, in her own field, challenged convention and opened doors for the generation that follows. The Continental GTC they have created carries that weight quietly, in every stitch, every gold finish and every carefully considered detail.

After its debut, the car will join Bentley’s UK press fleet for several months before being sold. It is, by any measure, a remarkable commission: a single vehicle that holds within it three distinct careers, a shared passion for creative boundary-pushing, and the accumulated skill of Bentley’s artisans in Crewe.

The women behind the commission

Anna Lapwood received her MBE at the age of 28, an honour that reflected a career already marked by genuine distinction. She has built a social media following of more than four million people by performing classical organ music in ways that connect with audiences far beyond the concert hall. She performs concertos regularly with leading symphony orchestras and has collaborated with artists as varied as Raye, Bonobo and Benedict Cumberbatch. Her advocacy for women in music is central to her public identity: she was the first female organ scholar in Magdalen College Oxford’s 560-year history, and her hashtag #playlikeagirl has been adopted widely across the music community.

In March 2025, Anna released ‘Firedove’ with the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge, recorded on the organ of Nidaros Cathedral. Two months later she was appointed the inaugural official organist of the Royal Albert Hall, a role that confirmed her place at the very top of her profession.

Tina Guo is a Chinese-born American Grammy-nominated cellist whose output crosses classical, cinematic and experimental music with equal fluency. She is one of the most recorded solo cellists working today, having appeared on the scores for films including Dunkirk, Inception, Sherlock Holmes, DUNE, DUNE 2, Gran Turismo and Top Gun: Maverick, alongside video game soundtracks for titles such as Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. She co-composed the Main Theme for Wonder Woman with Hans Zimmer, a piece that has since become widely associated with female strength and ambition.

Tina performs on a Gand & Bernadel cello made in Paris in 1878, a customised Yamaha SVC-210 electric cello and an erhu made in Shanghai. Her latest project, The Water Phoenix, is a prehistoric music undertaking that draws on Nordic Tribal music and Chinese prose, channelling ancestral roots from China, Mongolia, Indigenous America and Pakistan.

Sister Bliss co-founded Faithless in 1995 alongside producer Rollo and vocalist Maxi Jazz, and has been the creative musician at the heart of the group’s sound ever since. Across 30 years, the act has produced eight albums and six top-ten singles, selling over 20 million records and accumulating more than a billion streams worldwide. Their track Insomnia has been voted the fifth best dance track of all time. As one of the first female DJs to achieve sustained mainstream success, Sister Bliss helped create a path through the traditionally male-dominated world of electronic music that many have since followed.

Following the loss of Maxi Jazz in 2022 and an eight-year absence from the stage, Faithless returned to live performance in 2024. The band continued touring through 2025 with dates across the UK and Europe, and released their latest studio album, Champion Sound.

Designing the car

The design process was led by two senior female design consultants within Mulliner, who worked with all three artists to translate their individual visions into a coherent whole. The brief was broad: create a Bentley that reflects who they are. The result sits somewhere between autobiography and object, a car in which every finish and feature carries specific meaning.

The exterior centres on Peacock Satin, a satin-finish paint that runs from the bodywork through to the pockets of the ten-spoke 22-inch wheels, which carry bright-machined faces. Tornado Red accent fine lines are applied to the gloss black front bumper lower edge and rear diffuser, with a matching Tornado Red Satin accent to the wing mirrors and red brake calipers. The roof is finished in Dark Grey Metallic, providing a composed counterpoint to the richness of the Peacock Satin below.

An interior built from three careers

Inside, the three artists worked together on a shared colour palette before each selecting one bespoke detail that spoke directly to her own work. The base scheme begins with Imperial Blue leather, aligning with the Peacock Satin exterior, before opening up with Pillar Box Red accents and a Gold accent hide. Contrast stitching in Imperial Blue, Pillar Box Red and Gold thread runs through the key areas of the cabin. The headrest bezels, normally finished in chrome, are painted in Imperial Blue Satin to match the surrounding leather. Pillar Box Red is applied to the inner dials of the Bentley Rotating Display, the speaker grilles are anodised in Gold and Beluga, and the Mulliner overmats are Imperial Blue with a Gold micropipe.

Tina Guo selected the fascia design, choosing a Copper Stone veneer. The material is real stone, cut to just 0.6mm in thickness, and its warm red and gold tones align precisely with the interior palette. For Tina, the choice carried personal significance: the ancient quality of the stone connected directly to her project The Water Phoenix and its exploration of prehistoric music traditions.

Sister Bliss contributed a soundwave embroidery design, a first for any Bentley. The pattern mirrors the audio waveforms she works with across Faithless’ music and is stitched to the seats and doors in blind Imperial Blue thread, with contrast Pillar Box Red thread used across the tonneau cover of the convertible roof. The same pattern appears on the treadplates, and when either door is opened, an animated version of the waveform is projected onto the floor by the bespoke puddle lamps.

Anna Lapwood’s personal contribution arose from a detail already built into every Bentley cabin. The air vent controls, known as Organ Stops, take their name from the pipe organ: like their musical counterparts, they are tactile, linear controls that govern the flow of air. For Anna, the connection was immediate. She specified the Organ Stops to be finished in 24K gold, drawing them into the broader palette of the interior and giving them a prominence they do not usually hold.

The finishing detail

Set into the centre console is a polished stainless steel plaque bearing the laser-engraved signatures of all three women alongside a unique Spotify code. When scanned through the Spotify app, the code opens a playlist curated jointly by Lapwood, Guo and Sister Bliss. That playlist plays directly through the car’s Bang & Olufsen sound system, which is fitted with anodised gold and black speaker grilles. It is the kind of detail that takes a bespoke car beyond craft and into something closer to portraiture.

Founded in 1919 by W.O. Bentley and based in Crewe since the mid-twentieth century, Bentley Motors has been part of the Volkswagen Group since 1998. The company employs more than 4,000 people and handcrafts five models: the Continental GT, Continental GT Convertible, Flying Spur, Bentayga and Bentayga EWB. Its Beyond100+ strategy commits the company to becoming exclusively electric by 2035. The Extraordinary Women Continental GTC, built by that same workforce, will join Bentley’s UK press fleet before eventually being sold to a private owner.