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Bentley and Italdesign tease Geneva reveals

With five weeks to go until the Geneva Motor Show on March 5, automakers have begun the tease campaign. But because there are still five weeks to go, the teases are a little stingy. Bentley and Italdesign, two brands owned by the Volkswagen Group - Audi, specifically, owns Italdesign - break the seal with what look like two sports cars, the segment Geneva's best known for. Bentley, surprise, surprise, will celebrate its centenary year at Geneva with something inspired by its Le Mans history. The English carmaker's teaser video contains a number of historical elements that we don't know how to line up with the grille of the modern Bentley featuring a "9" graphic. The narrator detailing the early Le Mans race mentions 60 entries, but Le Mans never fielded exactly sixty entries during Bentley's fame-making days. The closest we could get was the 1925 race, the year after Bentley's first win, which saw 55 cars line up. But in 1925, the No. 9 Bentley had to retire after 13 hours when it caught on fire during a fuel stop. Instead, Bentley could be referring to the next evolution of its race cars. The brand won Le Mans with the Speed 6, and used the Speed 8 to win the 2003 race. Italdesign has gone even more cryptic with its teaser. The styling house most recently known for the Lamborghini Huracan-based Zerouno in 2017, and the Zerouno Duerte and Nissan GT-R50 in 2018, is promoting something else with serious wing. We'll guess it isn't another Zerouno derivative because of the wing stanchion. Freezing a few of the frames reveals background lines that make whatever's coming look highly racy. We'll get answers in the city by the lake. And most likely, a few more teasers before then. Related Video:

Bentley planning new Le Mans prototype for LMP2 class

Word has it that Bentley is planning a new Le Mans prototype racer. Speaking with Bentley chief Wolfgang Durheimer, Autocar reports that a new LMP2 project is underway at Crewe. The program would be run in-house instead of outsourced to a partner racing team. But while the prototype would likely use the company's 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, the chassis by necessity would have to be outsourced: the three major sanctioning bodies recently got together to approve Dallara, Oreca, Riley-Multimatic, and Onroak exclusively to supply LMP2 chassis, so Bentley would have to base its design around one of theirs. The British automaker might have a number of reasons for restricting itself to the LMP2 class. Chief among them is likely the presence of both Porsche and Audi in the top-tier LMP1 category, and parent company Volkswagen's likely reluctance to send another one of its brands into the same fight. Another is budget: developing and fielding a competitive LMP1 program can be as costly as running an F1 team, whereas the prospect of sourcing and adapting an LMP2 chassis from an approved supplier would cost Bentley far less. But another factor not to be discounted is that Bentley may be choosing its battles carefully. Where the LMP1 prototypes are constricted largely to Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship of which it is part, there are several series that top out at LMP2 – most notable the IMSA SportsCar Championship where Bentley is tipped to focus first, but also in the European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series. In fact [SPOILER ALERT] an LMP2 entry just won the 24 Hours of Daytona for the first time, beating out the Daytona Prototypes against which they compete. Those are bragging rights that Bentley could be keen to capture, and if it plays its cards right, it could sit out the LMP2 class at Le Mans and in the WEC altogether, rather than compete for second-tier victory behind its big brothers in LMP1. That would make this program radically different from the last time Bentley built a Le Mans prototype. In the early 2000s, Bentley fielded successive versions of the Speed 8 (pictured above) with a little help from Audi, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 2003. The company then shut down the program, only to return to racing with the Continental GT3, developed with longtime Ford rally partner M-Sport and offered to privateer teams.

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.