Have you admired a Bentley as it drives on the roads near your vehicle? This brand has a knack for putting the amount of style and quality into a vehicle that makes it feel like you should pull over and be off the road as the car wearing the Bentley name drives past you. We’ve loved the look and the sleek yet substantial build of the cars offered from Bentley for many years and want to see more of what this brand offers for the drive, even if all we ever get to do is stop and stare.
Recently, the new 2019 Bentley Flying Spur was witnessed testing on public roadways. This new prototype was spotted wearing enough camouflage to make it look like the current version of the Flying Spur, but the car wasn’t fooling those in the know that have seen the new Continental GT and know what Bentley has been planning for the future of the brand. As this new car made it way around the roadways that it was being tested on, some thoughts and questions came to mind that won’t be answered until this car makes its debut.
When the new version of the Flying Spur shows up at the show and on the market in the near future, it will share a platform with another high-end car that we admire and want to enjoy driving; the Porsche Panamera. The new shared platform is called the MSB-F and it’s able to offer this pair of perfect models the ride needed and the choice between RWD and AWD to make sure both Porsche and Bentley can offer impressive sedans for us to admire and enjoy when we take them out on the roads for a ride.
Because we know the new Flying Spur will share the platform of the Panamera, the expectation is that we’ll see some of the same powertrain options offered for this car as well. These could range from the plug-in hybrid and diesel layouts to some of the more powerful gasoline engines we’ve seen. The true hope of Bentley fans is that we still have the ability to choose the 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged W12 engine, but that leads to another question that might come with an answer we don’t want. Will the W12 engine be offered or is it time to retire it and pull the power out of hybrid models for the future? As one of the signature engines we’ve loved for the power and performance offered in Bentley models, this engine has been able to be something of a legend in the automotive world. Maybe we will have one more run with this massive power plant to give us a drive we want to enjoy before Bentley kills it off for good, but the writing is certainly on the wall that large engines will eventually be deleted from the market in favor of forced induction and hybrid models that can provide the same amount of power with better efficiency and lower emissions.