2005 Bentley Continental Gt Coupe 2-door 6.0l on 2040-cars

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2015 Bentley Flying Spur V8

Despite Bentley's reputation as a holier-than-thou, ultra-luxury brand, at the end of the day, the Big B is still a business. As such, ongoing trends like powertrain downsizing and model range expansion are more prevalent at Bentley than ever. Just look at the Continental range - what started as the GT W12 has expanded into the GTC W12, GT V8, GT V8 S, GTC V8, GTC V8 S, GT Speed and GTC Speed. Talk about "have it your way."
But there's good reason for that. So many of these vehicles, despite their hand-crafted, bespoke nature, are all - gasp! - plug-and-play exercises that allow Bentley to appeal to the broadest range of upper-lux buyers, while keeping development costs relatively low. It's a move that's indeed worked, the company managing to post healthy sales increases year after year. And that's only going to get better, following the launch of the Flying Spur sedan last year, not to mention the upcoming, highly anticipated SUV that's in the works. As Kevin Rose, Bentley's member of the board for sales, marketing and aftersales told me recently, "The best years are yet to come."
To further expand an already growing range, I recently hopped a plane to London to experience the second member of the Flying Spur family - the V8. This less-powerful Spur offers better fuel efficiency and a lower staring price, while not compromising any of the brand's core values of luxury and refinement above all. But to paraphrase what executive editor Chris Paukert said when he drove the Conti GT V8 in 2012, this is indeed The Thinking Man's Flying Spur. Here, less really is more.

Bentley Mulsanne Le Mans Limited Edition celebrates in patrician hues

Bentley has made good on its promise to show off its Mulsanne Le Mans Limited Edition here at Pebble Beach, and the good news is that the thing is a far less aggressively green than we'd been led to believe. In fact, the verdant Mulsanne looks downright proper when parked with Bentley historics as context.
The Limited Edition car is meant to celebrate both the 90th Anniversary of Le Mans itself, as well as ten years since Bentley took home the hardware with its Speed 8 racer. By "celebrate" we of course mean that this Mulsanne gets diamond quilted leather all over its lavish cabin, has sportier than normal steering and suspension tuning and is likely to offer a meaty exhaust growl via its "Quad Effect" tailpipe ends. A set of dark-finish wheels really pull the look together.
Of course, as we've brought you the details of the Mulsanne Le Mans Limited Edition already, you knew all of that. Relax your brain and just look at the pretty pictures above.

Bentley shifting W12 engine production to UK

Who would you think would be the largest producer of 12-cylinder engines in the world? Mercedes? BMW? Ferrari? Think again: as you might have guessed from the headline, it's Bentley. The thing is that, while all Bentley automobiles are manufactured in the UK, its engines aren't: while the 6.75-liter V8 in the Mulsanne is made at home, the innovative 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 engine in Continental models so equipped (like the newer 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8) is shipped in from Germany. But that won't be the case any longer.
Bentley has just announced that production of the W12 engine is moving to its home base in Crewe by the end of this year. The shift in production (which follows the migration of the Flying Spur from Dresden to Crewe in 2007) will create 100 jobs in the UK - a country which employs some 142,000 workers in the automotive sector - and produce as many as 9,000 engines per year. That in and of itself would account for the vast majority of the 10,000-plus cars Bentley made last year, but will also make Bentley an exporter of engines for the first time in its history.
Right there at the factory, Bentley will fit the engines into twelve-cylinder versions of the Continental GT, GTC and Flying Spur, and send some back to Germany for use in the Audi A8. Applications within the Volkswagen brand itself like the Phaeton and Touareg no longer use the W12 engine, but could conceivably use it again in the future - they'll just have to bring them in from England is all.