2008 Bentley Continental Flying Spur In Beluga With Only 52,751 Miles! on 2040-cars

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Bentley will build 1929 Team Blower continuation series of 12 cars

Bentley considers Sir Tim Birkin’s supercharged 4 1/2 -liter Team Blower race car to be the company's "most revered heritage car" ever. So revered, in fact, that Bentley wants to make the car again, 12 times over. With the help of some reverse engineering by Mulliner, Bentley has announced its intentions for an extremely special continuation series limited to only a dozen examples built nearly identical to the original.  Through various methods, Bentley has been celebrating its heritage all throughout 2019, the centenary of the brand's founding. Just in the summer months, Bentley released the third-gen Flying Spur, unveiled the EXP 100 GT autonomous electric concept, built a Continental GT convertible that honors the 1929 Blower Number 1, won Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours, and re-created 1939 Corniche sedan with the help of Mulliner. That last achievement is particularly relevant, as Mulliner typically crafts bespoke new cars, as opposed to building old ones. After successfully bringing the Corniche into the 21st century, however, Bentley is confident Mulliner can take on the complex task of rebuilding the legendary Team Blower.  Bentley claims this will be the world's first continuation of a pre-war race car, and the original production run didn't even make it to double digits. Only four Team Blowers were built for Birkin and the boys to race, which they did at Le Mans and all over Europe. Bentley is building 12 re-creations because that's how many races the original cars competed in. In order to take this project on, Bentley will disassemble Team Blower chassis No. HB 3404 down to its nuts and bolts. The parts will all be cataloged and 3D scanning of each individual piece will create the foundation for the new cars. Bentley will then combine use of the original 1920s molds and tooling jigs with modern manufacturing methods to create 12 identical sets of parts. The new cars will be as close to identical to the original car as possible, but current safety regulations will force Bentley to make a few changes and alterations. Under the hood, the Continuation Series cars will have 16-valve four-cylinder engines with aluminum crankcases, cast-iron cylinder liners, and non-detachable cast-iron cylinder heads. With the help of Amherst Villiers Mk IV roots-type supercharger replicas, the 4,398 cc engines will be rated at 240 bhp at 4,200 rpm.

Weekly Recap: Mercedes continues the pseudo-coupe craze with AMG-tuned CUV

But as BMW's X6 has demonstrated, sport sells in in the crossover segment, and Mercedes is giving the people what they want. BMW proved there is a market for crossover utility vehicles designed to look like coupes – as much as a vehicle with four doors and noticeable ground clearance can look like a coupe, anyway. Now comes the reply from Mercedes-Benz: the GLE Coupe. The rakish crossover is a harbinger of things to come from Mercedes, as it begins the company's transition to a new nomenclature and marks the debut of the AMG Sport line. It also continues the recent coupe craze. Designers from many automakers, like Nissan and Volkswagen, have increasingly turned to swoopy, dramatic styling to make utility vehicles and sedans seem more desirable. By revealing the GLE 450 AMG Sport model first, Mercedes is clearly hoping to cast the GLE Coupe as a sportier, lifestyle-oriented alternative in its lineup of beefy crossovers and SUVs. Mercedes used the word "sport," or a variation of it, 53 times in its press release, so uh yeah, it's sporty. It's not an empty promise: Benz means business with the AMG Sport line. This GLE Coupe gets a 3.0-liter biturbo V6 rated at 362 horsepower and 384 pound-feet of torque paired with Mercedes' new nine-speed automatic transmission, and it runs with 4Matic all-wheel drive. Specs on the other GLE Coupe models were not disclosed. But as BMW's X6 has demonstrated, sport sells in in the crossover segment, and Mercedes is giving the people what they want. After all, more than 260,000 people have bought X6s since 2008, and Mercedes wants a piece of that. From certain angles, the GLE Coupe even looks vaguely like an X6. "This is really a vehicle that is all about status," said Dave Sullivan, product analysis manager for research firm AutoPacific. "You can buy a SUV that doesn't have the inherent qualities of a SUV, such as cargo hauling. People will likely be drawn to the looks. Coupes are all the rage." BMW, however, isn't running from the fight, and the updated 2015 X6 is arriving in showrooms this month. It also added a smaller sibling, the X4, to its coupe-crossover stable in July. The GLE Coupe arrives next year, though Mercedes hasn't specified exactly when it will hit showrooms from the factory in Alabama, or specified details on the rest of the non-AMG Sport models. In 2008, it was surprising the X6 was a hit. In 2015, it will be even more surprising if the GLE Coupe isn't.

Autoblog's Editors' Picks: Our complete list of the best new vehicles

It's not easy to earn an “EditorsÂ’ Picks” at Autoblog as part of the rating and review process that every new vehicle goes through. Our editors have been at it a long time, which means weÂ’ve driven and reviewed virtually every new car you can go buy on the dealer lot. There are disagreements, of course, and all vehicles have their strengths and weaknesses, but this list features what we think are the best new vehicles chosen by Autoblog editors. We started this formal review process back in 2018, so there's quite of few of them now. So what does it mean to be an EditorsÂ’ Pick? In short, it means itÂ’s a car that we can highly recommend purchasing. There may be one, multiple, or even zero vehicles in any given segment that we give the green light to. What really matters is that itÂ’s a vehicle that weÂ’d tell a friend or family member to go buy if theyÂ’re considering it, because itÂ’s a very good car. The best way to use this list is is with the navigation links below. Click on a segment, and you'll quickly arrive at the top rated pickup truck or SUV, for example. Use the back button to return to these links and search in another segment, like sedans. If youÂ’ve been keeping up with our monthly series of the latest vehicles to earn EditorsÂ’ Pick status, youÂ’re likely going to be familiar with this list already. If not, welcome to the complete list that weÂ’ll be keeping updated as vehicles enter (and others perhaps exit) the good graces of our editorial team. We rate a new car — giving it a numerical score out of 10 — every time thereÂ’s a significant refresh or if it happens to be an all-new model. Any given vehicle may be impressive on a first drive, but we wait until itÂ’s in the hands of our editors to put it through the same type of testing as every other vehicle that rolls through our test fleet before giving it the EditorsÂ’ Pick badge. This ensures consistency and allows more voices to be heard on each individual model. And just so you donÂ’t think weÂ’ve skipped trims or variants of a model, we hand out the EditorsÂ’ Pick based on the overarching model to keep things consistent. So, when you read that the 3 Series is an EditorsÂ’ Pick, yes, that includes the 330i to the M3 and all the variants in between. If thereÂ’s a particular version of that car we vehemently disagree with, we make sure to call that out.