Green Options

Bentley has released official pictures of the ethanol-powered GT we previewed a few weeks ago.  This new car is the first flex-fuel vehicle in the company’s history, and Bentley is calling the 621 bhp bruiser the “Continental Supersports”.  Bentley claims the GT’s owners will be able to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds on their way to a top speed of 204 mph.

Several weeks ago, I filled you in on Bentley’s upcoming ethanol supercar, promised to be the fastest, most powerful Bentley ever offered.

In the days since, Bentley has kept the world’s journalists hungry for more details, releasing only this “Project Victoria” teaser video, a March reveal date, and precious little else… but has one of Volkswagen’s lesser-known suppliers inadvertently given away Project Victoria’s horsepower secrets?

You bet! Read it here first, after the jump.

Bentley will be using the upcoming Geneva show as a launchpad for a biofuel powered GT that Bentley’s PR reps promise will be the fastest and most powerful production car in the company’s history.

Details of the new Continental variant are limited, and the company has only released a single teaser image (above) while promising the moon and the stars above for it’s coming eco-missile.  Without further details, we can only guess at the new Conti-green’s powertrain… sounds like fun!

Some educated guesses after the jump.

The British Queen Elizabeth II has two state Bentleys, which according to the US Department of Energy gets nine MPG in the city and uses 31.1 barrels of petroleum a year. These royal $15 million gas guzzlers are being converted to bio-ethanol.

According to Jalopnik, the Queen is preempting Bentley’s move to biofuels:

Queen Elizabeth the II, who lives rent free in several state-owned mansions and castles — the poorly insulated kind that are a bitch to heat in the winter — travels by a state-owned private jet and requires a security detail that uses many fossil fuel powered cars, trucks, motorcycles and helicopters, has decided to do her bit for the environment. The biofuel conversion is estimated to increase the fuel economy of her two, scarcely used, Bentleys by a staggering 40%. How? By burning some of her tiny island nation’s food supply in place of gasoline. Bentley is expected to introduce a similar system for its range of luxury cars by 2012, allowing similarly well-heeled individuals to feel better about themselves while dining on imported fine foodstuffs.

This week from our friends at ZapRoot: The most notorious bicycle thief is caught in Canada. Find out how Green is Joe Biden? Check out a new batch of Alternative Autos.

Of all car companies, Bentley Motors is embarking on a new green, carbon dioxide-reduction strategy. Announced at this year’s Geneva “auto salon,” the strategy aims, by 2012, to cut emissions and fuel consumption by 15 percent, and to introduce a new powertrain that slashes fuel requirements by 40 percent.

Photo courtesy of Dan Smith via Wikimedia Commons.