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Bentley marks 95th anniversary with special Mulsanne

The top end of the new car market seldom seems to need much justification for rolling out a new special edition - other than bringing in a few extra bucks and making its customers feel extra special in the process. Bentley, for its part, is celebrating its 95th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion has released a special edition of its top-of-the-line Mulsanne saloon.
Called the Mulsanne 95, the limited-edition limo gets three very British color options, dark-tint finish for the Flying B hood ornament and special 21-inch wheels. Step inside and you'll find two-tone blue and white leather with red top-stitching, with a 95 motif embroidered into the seats and special illuminated treadplates, all offset by special Fulbeck Walnut panels that come from a single, giant walnut tree some 300 to 400 years old that came down in a storm in Lincolnshire in 2007.
Buyers will be able to choose between Britania Blue, Empire Red or Oxford White, but only 15 examples will be made available, and all exclusively in Bentley's home UK market.

Bentley Continental GT3-R is a limited-edition racer for the street

Limited to just 300 examples worldwide, Bentley's new GT3-R is set to bring a bit of the brand's motorsports pedigree to the street. After all, the Flying B recently took the win at the Blancpain Endurance Series at Silverstone with its new Continental GT3, less than one year after the big racer's debut.
Like the road-going Conti GT, the GT3-R uses a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8, tuned in this application to 572 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque - increases of 51 hp and 14 lb-ft from the already potent GT V8 S. That's enough to get the 4,839-pound Bentley to 60 miles per hour in just 3.6 seconds, on its way to a top end of 170 mph.
To make the GT3-R more hardcore than standard Continentals, the air suspension has been retuned, the brakes have been upgraded with carbon silicon discs, and there's a titanium exhaust that's good for 15 pounds of weight-savings - in all, the GT3-R is some 200 pounds lighter than a comparable GT V8 S.

40+ cars that barely avoid the gas guzzler tax

The Gas Guzzler schedule, with mpg ratings and charges that haven't changed since 1991, lays out which fuel-swillers owe what to Uncle Sam.
I started thinking about the "Gas Guzzler Tax" - considerably less well known as The Energy Tax Act of 1978 - when I was driving Dodge's new Challenger SRT Hellcat last week. Unsurprisingly for a car that can burn 1.5 gallons of gas per minute at max tilt, theoretically able to empty a full tank of premium in about 13 minutes, the Hellcat will be subject to the Gas Guzzler Tax schedule when it goes on sale.