2009 Bentley Continental Flying Spur. Midnight Emerald With Saddle. on 2040-cars

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Enhance this football field-sized photo to find the Bentley

"Enhance! Enhance! Enhance!" Zooming in on this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge feels like taking part in a 2000s crime lab cop show, with their seemingly endless capabilities to zoom in a photo to catch a suspect. But it's not a grainy safety camera shot we are looking here, but a composite image stitched together using the same space age technology NASA uses to create panorama shots from Curiosity Rover images. Keep zooming, and a Bentley Mulsanne will appear. Keep zooming, and you can get close enough to see the stitching on the Bentley logo on the tan leather headrest. According to Bentley, the image was created by combining 700 separate photographs, and the image consists of 53 billion pixels, or 53 gigapixels. The starting point is nearly half a mile away, and if you decided to play a prank on whoever runs the nearest inkjet printer, you would produce enough material to fill a football field. Bentley says that the point of the zoomable image is to show just how much they pay attention to detail when crafting these $330,000 luxury cars. The particular car is a Mulsanne Extended Wheelbase finished in Rose Gold over Magnetic duo-tone. The image is viewable in its entirety over at Bentley's Look Closer website created for the occasion. Marketing/Advertising Bentley Luxury bentley mulsanne

2020 Bentley Continental GT V8 coupe and convertible – the frugal Bentleys

The Bentley Continental GT is getting its V8 option for the 2020 model year now. Released last year with the monster 6.0-liter W12, this will be the cheaper and less powerful version of the big Bentley coupe and convertible. That doesn't mean the Continental GT V8 will be a slouch, though. It's packing a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 engine that makes 542 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque. A 0-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds is claimed by Bentley, with a top speed of 198 mph. For comparison, Bentley claims the W12 Continental goes 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds and tops out at 207 mph. The V8 lags behind the W12 in brute force by 84 horsepower and 96 pound-feet of torque. Truly, the difference in driving these two engines will be minimal. There's nothing like the silky, effortless torque of a 12-cylinder engine, but this high-powered V8 is just half a step behind it. Bentley says you'll be able to audibly tell a difference between the two easily, because the V8 has a louder, burbling exhaust note. The quad exhaust tips look different on the V8, in addition to new 20-inch wheels. Subtle V8 badging is applied, but we're sure you can forego that for fear of advertising that you bought the cheap one. Another reason to take the V8 over the W12 is efficiency. Your wallet probably won't be hurting at the pump if you can afford either, but you'll be making less stops with the V8 due to its better gas mileage — Bentley says the V8's cylinder deactivation helps in that department to give the V8 better range with a full tank for those long European vacations. Bentley says customer deliveries begin in the U.S. in the third quarter. Prices for the V8 start at $203,825 for the coupe and $223,675 for the convertible. That ain't cheap, but it's cheaper than the $214,600 sticker on the W12. It's tough to say no to four more cylinders at that price point, especially when you'll then be able to brag about having all 12 of them.

Bentley, Lamborghini consider foreign production [w/poll]

Would a Bentley be a Bentley if it weren't manufactured in Great Britain? Would a Lamborghini be a Lamborghini if it were built outside of Italy? It may be hard to say either way, but we might find out sooner than later, because the latest word coming in from Europe is that the Volkswagen Group is considering expanding production for both these upscale brands outside their traditional homes.
According to the Autovisie section of Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the issue for both automakers comes down to their ambitious expansion programs. Both Bentley and Lamborghini plan to launch new SUVs - the former's being well under way, the latter's still awaiting approval - that would expand their annual production considerably: by 50 percent in Bentley's case, and by as much as 100 percent in Lamborghini's.
For now, both marques intend to handle the added production with additional assembly lines at their current facilities in Crewe and Sant'Agata Bolognese, respectively. But both could soon outgrow their relatively small plants - and with the Volkswagen Group operating countless factories across Europe and around the world, it wouldn't be hard to see these manufacturers shifting excess production outside of their home countries.