New Bentley Continental GT: Stunning Performance Engine Details Confirmed
Published: 6th March 2003
The engine in the Continental GT has undergone some of the most gruelling and exhausting test procedures of any engine in order to ensure that it can be depended upon to accommodate all and more than any owner could ever expect of it. Naturally prototypes have and continue to rack up millions of miles in some of the hottest, coldest, driest and most humid places on earth but perhaps no single test illustrates the relentless pursuit of engineering perfection than those tests performed with the engine out of the car and sitting on a bench.
Perhaps the most eye-opening of these is a test where the engine is switched on and revved to maximum revolutions (6300rpm) from cold and then left there not for a few minutes or even a few hours. It is left to run at maximum speed for 100 hours or, put another way, over four Le Mans 24-hour races on the trot.
Another test puts the engine through an advanced programme of cyclical accelerations, decelerations and steady state running at all points in the rev range for 500 hours non-stop or, to put that it perspective, just four hours short of three weeks.
The engine has also been exposed to prolonged thermal shock cycling where internal temperatures are swiftly brought to a peak whereupon its coolant is replaced by ice-cold fluid in order to induce the swiftest possible drop in temperature before the engine is re-heated up to maximum temperature again and the process is repeated.
Conclusion
As can be seen, the engine chosen to power the Continental GT offers rather more than a world-beating power output. It was designed specifically not simply to deliver unprecedented performance, but to do so in a way that was inimitably Bentley. It would have been possible, for instance, to use a smaller capacity 'screamer' to develop the same power at much higher revs, but such an engine would force the driver to work much harder and could never generate torque like the Continental GT. The effortless response would disappear and while the result might still be a fine engine, it would not be a Bentley engine.
Engine- Type W12, cast aluminium alloy block and cylinder heads,
with aluminium wet sump lubrication, twin 3K turbochargers,
air to air intercooling
Dimensions (l/w/h) 653mm, 820mm, 714mm - Bore and stroke 84mm/90.2mm
- Displacement 5998cc
- Compression ratio 09:01
- Boost pressure 0.7bar
- Engine management Bosch ME 7.1.1
- Valve gear Four overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder
- Emissions standard Euro IV
- Fuel rating 95/98 RON
- Power 560PS (552bhp) (411 kW) at 6100rpm
- Torque 650Nm (479lb ft) at 1600rpm
Performance
- 0-60mph 4.7sec (0-100 km/h 4.8sec)
- Top speed over 190 mph (over 300 km/h)
