No.

No, no, no, no, no.

For starters, body kits are really iffy and subjective … it’s your car, sure, and you can screw it up all you want, but going down that body kit road is a very dicey proposition in the first place, and in this instance, it’s downright disastrous.

If you want another example of being rich doesn’t mean you have taste, look no further.

What, did some rich guy say, over a spot of tea, “You know Clive, I’m tired of all those 17 year olds working at KFC spending all of their money on tacky aero add-ons for their Civics. I say, WE should do that to my Bentley!”

At that point, given the English’s long history of dealing with ne’er do well psychopaths, someone should have hit him over the head and dropped him off at Bedlam for a nice, relaxing stay.

But no … they had to humor him, they had to let him go ahead and do it.

Real nice guys.

You made a bazillion Euro car look like Nobuo’s totally off the hook Civic.

Congratulations.

OK, so Bentley is going green (or so says their PR department), but who isn’t these days.

The boys from Crewe (at the behest of their owners in Germany) have laid out a three stage attack on the subject:

1 - Improved efficiency: Average fleet emissions to fall by at least 15% by 2012
2 - New powertrain in development to deliver 40% improvement in fuel economy
3 - Renewable fuel
* Flex-fuel engines to be introduced throughout the Bentley range by 2012
* First engines using renewable fuels to be available by next year

It’s the second point that got my attention.

A forty percent increase in fuel economy? And do they really mean to do that by 2012? That’s only 4 years away … how are they planning on doing that?

I know, they didn’t really tie the power increase into that timetable, but here’s what I’m thinking. I bet that what they do, after working out whatever bugs would bother Bentley buyers, is they pull some big-assed diesels from the Audi factory and drop them into engine bays across the Bentley range. They would, of course, re-badge them as being “Bentley” engines, add that you can run them on bio-diesel (some upper crust bio-diesel, made from refined crumpet leftovers or perhaps, recycled members of the Cratchit family), reconfig the gas burners to run on ethanol blends, and et voila, MPG figures go way up.

OK, that’s my guess, what’s yours?

Read the full Bentley press release after the jump. Continue Reading…

Bentley has created their most powerful production car ever. As if the Continental GT wasn’t cool enough, they’ve upped their game with the Continental GT Speed, and have consequently further skewed the line between luxury and exotic sport coupes.

Among several subtle design changes, Bentley has increased the power of the GT Speed to 600 horsepower, decreasing the 0-60 time to only 4.3 seconds (down from 4.6 seconds,) and increased it’s top speed to 202 mph - the first time a Bentley has reached speeds over 200 mph. The passing speed (50-70mph) is only 2.3 seconds. Continue Reading…