Fastest Bentley Ever Will Run on Biofuel
If you’re going to produce an absurdly expensive luxury racer that can claim the mantle of “fastest and most powerful” in your history, why not make it run on biofuel?
This is Bentley’s somewhat suspect reasoning behind its yet-to-be-named racer. As Jalopnik.com points out, this means the car will have to top the Continental GT Speed in acceleration (0-60 mph in less than 4.3 seconds), top speed (202 mph), horsepower (600 ponies) and torque (553 pounds-feet).
And it will run on a yet-to-be-named biofuel. Likely this will be some kind of ethanol, but we’ll know for sure when the car debuts at the 2009 Geneva auto show.
Here’s our question, though: Does a car that can go more than 200 mph really need a green halo hanging over it? Do the obscenely rich buy extravagant and unnecessary cars because they’re powered by switchgrass instead of gasoline? Even if you’re Matt Damon and enamored by an ultra-luxury green vehicle, why would you forgo a plug-in hybrid or electric car in favor of one that runs on a fuel you’ll have to spend extra time hunting down?
Bentley, please explain.
Fastest Bentley Ever Will Run on Biofuel (Jalopnik.com)
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Well, it is a Bentley and so few of them are made. Therefore it will sell out. The green halo like an extra cherry on top or interested factoid to share around the table.
KickingTires, I think you are missing the boat with your concern. There is a wonderful public relations benefit of illustrating how biofuels can be high performance when used appropriately. If it takes an extravagant and controversial example to do that, so be it. Of course this switchgrass raising farmer questions why one wouldn't put that kind of money into a fancy new tractor...
Biofuels based on ethanol don't suffer from pre-ignition at high compression ratios nearly as badly as pure gasoline does. In other words, E85 acts like a very high octane fuel and can then be used to make very high performance engines. This is likely why they would want to go down this route; it has nothing to do with green-y-ness (that's a real word, right?).
It'll be interesting to see the fuel economy numbers with this running on E85. 2, maybe 3 combined, 5 highway?
Judging from the pictures, that Bentley looks more appealing and sleeker than before plus the advantage of running it on biofuel makes this one heck of a car.