No diesels for Bentley
Click above for high-res gallery of the 2009 Bentley Brooklands
Bentleys and buckets of torque go hand-in-hand. Therefore, it might make some sense for the German-owned British luxury marque to consider one of the VW Group's big, powerful turbodiesels for one of its upcoming models. Not so fast, says Bentley. It has specifically polled its customer base -- made up mostly of Americans and Asians -- to determine if there's any interest in an oil-burning Bentley. Apparently, there isn't. Instead, the luxo-barge company will focus on biofuels in an effort to lower the fuel consumption and emissions of a numbers of its models. As a matter of fact, the first flex-fuel engine from the Flying B is expected to debut in 2009 and Franz-Josef Paefgen, Bentley's Chief Executive, says that all of its models will be capable of running on biofuels by 2012 as part of its plan to go
[Source: Autocar]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
CarbonBlack 7:41PM (8/22/2008)
Damnit!
I hoped they would make a turbo diesel v12 with torque out the a$$.
oh well, I couldn't afford it anyway ;-)
-nick
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Yar 7:48PM (8/22/2008)
Yea, since 700+ lb/ft isn't nearly enough...
jgp 10:07PM (8/22/2008)
Actually, that's exactly why diesel makes sense for Bentley. Their engines already have the character of diesels...
Crackberry Addict 7:47PM (8/22/2008)
instead of diesels they should focus on putting their cars on extreme diet plans!!!!
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ugg.tryptophan 12:20AM (8/23/2008)
bentleys are icons of frivolous consumption, a light bentley is as likely as luxury hyundai
paulmer 2:47PM (8/23/2008)
As likely as a luxury Hyundai? May I point you to the genesis?
j_diesel 8:41PM (8/22/2008)
i would have loved to see what kind of evil turbodiesel could have been shoved under a bentley hood. certainly enough power and torque could have been made. it's all your point of view i guess.
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mikeg216 4:07PM (8/23/2008)
come on no bent owner is going to be seen at a diesel pump have you seen those things they are covered with gas and they dont have a credit card machine
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1883atlantics 10:48PM (8/22/2008)
This car is built in the UK (officially under Imperial measurement standards AFAIK) so why does it list the engine at "six and three-quarters litres"? The litres are metric, right? But the three-quarters measurement (fraction) is not generally used in the metric system.
I'm lost here. Is this a Bentley thing or normal in the UK or what?
Apologies in advance if I'm thinking along the wrong lines here!
Jeff
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master811 12:25AM (8/23/2008)
Yeah you got the wrong end of the stick there, the 3/4 thing has nothing to do with being metric or imperial. Fractions don't suddenly disappear as soon you use the metric system. You must be very confused - fractions are not a unit of measurement.
Rockhopjoihn 3:32AM (8/23/2008)
Hmm, maybe they could go with the one and three-quarters gallon V8.
Hike15 10:49PM (8/22/2008)
damn i was hoping to see some semi engine making enough torque to reverse the direction the earth spins
o well...i guess 700 lb ft is good enough for now
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HotRodzNKustoms 11:45PM (8/22/2008)
Personally I love the 6 3/4 litre Bentley motor even more than the W12. Long live the 6 3/4 litre V8!
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Benfolio 10:20AM (8/23/2008)
I don't think anyone who would buy a Bentley necessarily cares about the environment and therefore would want a smaller, lighter car that runs on bio-fuel or diesel.
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1883atlantics 11:00AM (8/23/2008)
@master811
"Yeah you got the wrong end of the stick there, the 3/4 thing has nothing to do with being metric or imperial. Fractions don't suddenly disappear as soon you use the metric system. You must be very confused - fractions are not a unit of measurement."
I was referring to the fact that the fraction was used along with a metric unit of measure. I thought one would more often see ".75" with litre than "three-fourths". True, fractions don't disappear in the metric world even though it's not technically correct. See: Metrics the Right Way
http://www.pnl.gov/ag/usage/metrics.html
"Binary fractions (such as 1/2 or 3/8) are not used with metric units. For example, you would give a person's weight as 70.5 kg, not 70-1/2 kg."
Further, see:
The International System of Units (SI) by Dennis Brownridge http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/brownridge.html#correct-use
"Use decimals, not fractions."
What I wanted to know about is if this 6 3/4 litres thing is common in the UK as it seems a bit mixed up.
Jeff
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retsel 11:15AM (8/23/2008)
wait... does Bentley have a Hemi... Hemispherical Combustion Chambers...
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Jack Edward Sharpe Higginson 3:02PM (8/23/2008)
Britain is a bit mixed up - both metric and imperial measurements are used; by convention for different things. Milk and beer by the pint, soft drinks by the litre; long sitances by miles, short distances in either yards or metres; cooking measurements in ounces, but the packets of ingredients are in grams etc. The use of cubic inches for engine measurement was never popular in the UK, even before the widespread introduction of metric measurements, probably because of the influence on continental Europe of things like racing cars. c. 1900s-45 it was customary to refer to engine sizes by measurements like 1 1/2 litre, 4 1/2 litre etc., though this is now rare, Bently are just being anachronistic, and playing on historical connections since some of their most famous cars denumerated in this fashion.
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Calife 6:25PM (8/23/2008)
That's what she said... Oups, sorry, that what Porsche said (just a few years ago).
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1883atlantics 2:01AM (8/24/2008)
@Jack Edward Sharpe Higginson
thank you sir for that great explanation! I was confused about the whole mess and now it makes much more sense.
Jeff
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Nick 2:35AM (8/24/2008)
Or they could have multi-displacement engines (cylinder deactivation) and since you practically never need 500hp, it would run on 6 cylinders 90% of the time.
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