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Bentley is set to kill off its iconic 6.75L turbocharged V8 – and this time it’s for good.
Back around the turn of the millenium, Bentley debuted their new Arnage with a BMW-derived V8 engine. That didn’t go over well with the Bentley faithful, forcing the company to brand it as the “Green Label”, and then re-introduce the six-and-three-quarters V8 as the “Red Label”, the Bentley of choice for true pimps and scoundrels.
Going forward, Bentley will be pushed towards 12-cylinder engines, and having a V8 flagship doesn’t quite fit with that message. Volkswagen can push whatever message they want as far as we’re concerned; the one true Bentley is the one pictured above.
It’s 6 3/4 you heathens!
Yeah and what’s up with the Frenchy measurement; it’s a 1.8 G motor.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it.
I am getting 1.5 English gallons. But that makes it sound small. .5 barrels (sure only .5, but of a freaking barrel)? 412 cubic inches of terror? 12 pints? Pints are probably the most appropriate.
Those would be imperial gallons, sir, there is no such thing as an “English gallon!”
Your car has a fuel economy of 119,000/100km or if you like 0.002 mpg? You might want to make sure you haven’t left the choke out!
Re: th009 – To have imperial units one must have an empire.
Or at least memories of an empire. Heck, gallons are as much remnants of a bygone age as the term “imperial.”
Pronounced (quite clearly and loudly) as “Six-and-three-quarter litre”
Maybe Bentley will discover overhead cam engines and move out of the pushrod 1950’s.
Stupid pushrods – why doesn’t everyone (ahem, LSA) build overhead cam engines (cough, 8.4 Viper V10) – who needs low end lazy torque (erm, 6.4 HEMI) convenient packaging (grumble most practical and popular crate engines) and significant cost to performance numbers…
The biggest issues with pushrods today is that there are a bunch of biased consumers that associate ‘rods with “old” and OHC with “new” – respect the different approaches’ strengths, or sound like an uneducated forum-troll :)
Also, who cares if Bently “discovers” OHC? Considering the old 6 3/4 clearly has at least marketing cachet with the buyers, the real reason the pushrod engine is dying is VW’s engineers would turn purple and explode before considering a major redesign of the niche engine. Sad too, it’s nice to see real old school engineering at this kind of level – I respect twin-sequential turbos as much as I respect hardcore flow design on old 2 valvers.
Don’t worry Corvette (and the CTS-V) will keep pushrods very much alive, and kicking very hard.
Bentley built overhead cam engines in 1919. Pushrods supplanted overhead cams gradually, with a nasty F-head era in between.
Exactly. The “VTEC-yo my Civic is more hi-tech than your Corvette dawg” obsession with overhead camshafts completely ignores the fact that the output that an engine produces with a given amount of fuel is what matters. Both technologies are more than 100 years old. Any car with a camshaft, period, instead of solenoids or a pneumatic system, is stuck in the 1910s.
Overhead valve pushrod engines are still providing output and fuel economy numbers that surpass the best overhead cam engines.
Electronic fuel injection is MUCH more important to modern automobile performance numbers than overhead cams. And we have the EPA and CAFE to thank for it being fully developed.
@racer-esq:
“Overhead valve pushrod engines are still providing output and fuel economy numbers that surpass the best overhead cam engines.”
Really. Perhaps you can supply the name of these miracle pushrod engines. Please don’t rehash the examples of the Chevy V8 or Hemi. Torque per liter is the metric, because it is directly related to brake specific fuel consumption.
If you really mean that there are implementations where pushrod engines get better mileage than ohc engines, there is evidence for that. Zachman’s old and new Impalas show that effect. That is not the same thing as output per litre.
I should have been clearer. By “output and fuel economy numbers that surpass the best overhead cam engines” I meant combined output and fuel economy, or output for a given level of fuel economy.
DOHC engines can of course achieve more power per liter of displacement. But who cares, unless you are in a racing series that limits displacement. What matters in real life is output per liter of fuel, not output per liter of displacement, and modern pushrod engines are very competitive by that metric.
OHCs were never supplanted in Bentleys. Bentley ceased making cars in 1933.
You clearly do not know much about the history of Bentley do you?
Bentley were a pioneer of four-valve per cylinder overhead cam mono-block engines and had them in 1919.
I think we should all take a moment of silence at this news.
Owning one of these cars is on my automotive “bucket list”.
I’ve never driven one, never even sat in one, but the Bentley Mulsanne with the 6 3/4 V8 rests at the pinnacle of my list of unattainable lustworthy vehicles.
Perhaps in 20 years they’ll be available on Ebay motors for a pittance likes 80s and early 90s Bentleys are now.
Have they really changed so much that you can’t realize your dream with a cheap 15 year old one today?
The Mully has changed considerably in 15 years, the old one was based on RR’s Silver Spirit while the new one is not based on any rolls product.
The Bentley in the picture is based on the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph.
And of course Rolls-Royce developed the 6.75 liter engine and then shared it with the Bentley brand until VW acquired the Bentley brand and all Rolls-Royce motors assets except for the Rolls-Royce brand.
So really everything in a modern Bentley is still based on a Rolls Royce. Unless it is based on a VW Phaeton.
… or the Audi MLB architecture. (You do know that the new Continental GT doesn’t use the Phaeton D1 platform, right?)
The VW MLB platform is supposed to reduce front overhang but the proportions are still horrible on the Continental GT. Somehow Audi manages to make the A5 and A7 on the same platform look really good. The Continental GT is definitely the ugliest Audi one can buy.
The 6 3/4 in the new Mulsanne shares displacement bore and stroke with the old version of the engine, but the block, heads, and internals are all new and redesigned. It’s a brand new engine, it just carries over the 6 3/4 displacement for reasons of heritage.
752 lbs/ft of torque at 1750 rpm is absolutely insane for a gas motor. That’s more torque at a lower RPM than the Mercedes twin turbo V12 motor found in the xx65 AMG models.
You Sir, have excellent taste.
The oldest Arnages are now hitting the $30,000 mark used. Depreciation on these things is a bitch, I don’t think you’ll even have to wait 20 years on the new Mulsanne, more like 10.
I know I’ve called Bentleys ridiculous before, but there is still a spot for a 6 3/4 Bentley in my “dream garage”…
By the way, is it really true that every Bentley must pass a test where the car is driven on a bumpy road with a glass of wine inside, and it is “defective” if the wine spills – or is this an urban legend?
Just drive it slow enough.
Maybe it’s just me, but the whole “green/red label” thing reminds me of Johnnie Walker Whisky, favored Scotch of “Pimps and Scoundrels.” And, apparently, the late Christopher Hitchens.
I thought the same thing – but Red Label is nothing special, while Green Label is a reasonable Scotch. I get the ‘green = environment, red = sport’ thing, but still, it’s a bit silly from a (formerly) British make.
It’s an historic thing, copying what Bentley did back in the late 20’s when they had blue, green and red label cars
Didn’t Bentley just spend a mountain of cash to overhaul the 6 3/4? I remember reading that VW wanted to put a W12 in the Mulsanne but Bentley refused.
I guess Piech can only be denied for so long…..
Yes, I thought they just redesigned the 6 3/4 for the Mulsanne last year. They should have a few more good years with it.
Being the owner of a 6.75 V8 Bentley, this saddens me.
I would not consider buying a new Bentley without this engine – to me, the engine with it’s historical provenance is what makes a Bentley a Bentley.
Sad to see it go German.
The 6.75 is a Rolls-Royce engine. True Bentleys haven’t been produced since production moved to Derby in 1933.
The sucessor of Bentley cars is Lagonda which is where W.O. Bentley plied his trade after he took his bat and ball and stormed off from Rolls-Royce.
Sorry, but this owner considers Bentley as it sits to be the true heir to the history of Rolls Royce as it maintained it’s engine, the factory at Crewe, etc. To me, all of that, esp. the engine speaks to the authenticity of the car. I don’t consider the modern Rolls Royce to be authentic. If I wanted a 7 series, I’d buy it. (Is there anything in the drivetrain that isn’t German?) I don’t want an Audi either. Too bad for me.
The true heir to the history of Rolls-Royce is…Rolls-Royce, who exist today as the world’s second largest manufacturer of Aero-Engines. What’s more they own BMW too so it’s not quite the one-way street it seems.
So we have a situation where BMW car division own Rolls Royce’s car division whilst conversly Rolls Royce Aero engine division own BMWs Aero engine division.
agreed on the Arnage as the true Bentley, Derek, giving the last Brooklands the same status. can’t stand the Continental family and the Flying Spur in particular.
funny (or tragic) how Bentley and Rolls-Royce seem to have lost the plot in design, all their new cars look overdesigned and ordinary.
Anyone know how heavy the Bentley 6 3/4 is? It’s described as being like the Chrysler Hemi and the Chevy Small-block.
If its weight and size are like an SBC, then I think Lotus has its Esprit engine! Distinctive, powerful, British.
I have hard time believing this. Not only because Bentley just spent a fortune overhauling this engine, but also due to the fact that Continental is also going V8 – with the eight-cylinder version being (according to the reviews) in many respects better than W12, it makes more sense for all Bentleys to go V8 instead of getting a V12.
My father had a Rolls Royce flying spur in the Nineties and it had that old 6.75L v8 which sounded lovely when pushed, on the other hand I remember he test drove a Bentley flying spur with that odd w12 engine and to be honest it sounded like three individual four cylinders making lots and lots of uninteresting noises and nothing else. A Bentley deserves an appropriate engine and the w12 is not that engine.