Bentley sports car planned

Collaboration with Porsche promised in development of new sporting Bentley

Bentley is putting the case together to build a two-seater sports car, the brand's new boss Wolfgang Durheimer has revealed in a chat to journos, including PistonHeads. Not only that but Porsche is likely to be heavily involved in the development of it.

The move to build a sports car to sit alongside the GTs is one of two options Bentley is considering as a fifth model to follow the SUV that goes on sale in 2016. The other is a car that'll slot into between the Continental and Mulsanne, price-wise.

Durheimer is back and has big ambitions

He didn't elaborate on that, but given they're doing okay for saloons we can guess at a coupe costing around £180,000. Nothing will be decided until the SUV is in showrooms, but Bentley could do the double. "Honestly I would do both if I could," he said. If Durheimer's name is familiar then it's because he's done this job previously before going to Audi as head of technical development. Before joining Bentley the last time round in 2011 he was head of product development for Porsche, so he knows how to build a fast, involving car.

The new 'fifth' car he said could be built on the modular MSB platform being developed by Porsche. Reports say this is likely to be a front-engined lightweight platform with four-whee drive capability that'll underpin the next Panamera. So if he's talking about the sports car, we can imagine it'll be like a British version of the outgoing Mercedes SLS AMG. "We working very closely with Porsche, the MSB is under leadership of Porsche," Duerheimer said. "If we did do a two-seater it would be very quick."

What's less likely but still possible is that Bentley gets its hands on the same mid-engined supercar platform as fellow VW stablemates Audi and Lamborghini are using for the next R8 and new Huracan respectively. Either way we'd expect something more seat-of-the-pants exciting than even the new GT Speed, driven by PH earlier this week.

Something like this then, but a little bit lighter?

This next bit wasn't talked about but the MSB platform could also underpin the next Continental GT, which Durheimer wants to be considerably lighter than the 2.3 tonnes the W12 version weighs now. The inspiration is coming from the successful GT3 racecar, which recently spawned the V8 GT3-R limited edition road car with its lashings of acid green details. Apparently his order was to shave 1,000kg from the road car for the racer and his team achieved 1,034kg. "Now the question is: How can we carry over weight savings into serial production of the Continental GT?" he said.

Of course there was talk of lowering CO2 and to that end Bentley is launching a plug-in hybrid version of first the SUV and then "90 per cent of all its models by the end of the decade" according to Durheimer. Oh and they're actively investigating diesels, with the SUV likely to get the 4.2 V8 TDI from Audi.

Right now the sports car and the other potential model exist just in business cases and on the designers' computers. Which means now is the time for input. Could you see Bentley successfully pulling of an SLS style two-seater (no doubt coupe and convertible?) Our should it be aiming for something more radical?

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alexpa

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