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Jay Leno's 1930 Bentley GJ 400 is a 27-liter monster

Jay Leno's Garage never fails to impress - and by that we mean both the YouTube channel and the actual place. The latest online bit features another truly insane vehicle. Leno's 1930 Bentley GJ 400 isn't actually a classic car and has few Bentley parts on it. It's really a modern custom with vintage looks and a 27-liter Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine for power. This machine is absolutely immense, and weighs over three tons.
The Merlin engine was one the workhorses of World War II-era planes. In the GJ 400, Leno believes the V12 is making around 650-700 horsepower. Although, he admits that it could probably be pushed to over 1,000 if someone wanted to. However, he clearly loves this behemoth just the way it is.
While the design is classic, the mechanicals are relatively modern. The engine is fuel injected, and power routes through an automatic transmission to the rear wheels. Many of the updated pieces are hidden as well. For example, what looks like a blower at the front actually disguises an oil cooler.

Car-crazy 5-year-old boy writes automakers for treasures, gets big response

Part of the beauty of children is that they can find worth in something adults might deem unworthy or overlook entirely. Five-year-old Patch Hurty didn't see garbage or a broken piece of a car when he spotted a Ford badge lying on the side of a road. He saw an artifact, a souvenir, a start to a collection he could only dream of. Ezra Dyer of Popular Mechanics tells the story of Patch and his quest to turn that one lost badge into a museum of manufacturer logos. According to the article, Hurty is a car fanatic through and through, even using car names as a way of learning to read. After finding the Ford badge near his Connecticut home, he and his mom put together a plan to reach out to dozens of automakers, confessing his love of things on four wheels. In each letter, Patch assembled a picture of himself standing next to one of the cars, and a penny to pay for whatever he hoped was sent his way. The response was unexpectedly and overwhelmingly positive. Of the more than 50 letters he sent out, including to obscure or defunct companies such as Bugatti, Suzuki, and Saturn, a majority responded with warm notes and some type of souvenir. Two of the coolest responses came from Lincoln and Bentley. Lincoln sent a sketch of a Continental (all car lovers enjoy drawing cars, right?), and Bentley sent a wheel center cap. How awesome is that? The story reminds us of something that can easily be lost in all of the negativity involved with the auto industry: Everybody is in this because of a common infatuation with automobiles. For more details on the souvenirs Patch received and accompanying photos, read the rest of the story. Related Video: News Source: Popular Mechanics Read This Bentley Bugatti Ford Lincoln Saturn Suzuki

Meet the Bentley Inspirator, your A.I. Bentayga configurator

The future of the car configurator just sprouted a tender new shoot. The Bentley Inspirator app relieves Bentayga buyers of most of the heavy lifting when they're trying to sort out what kind of image they want their super-luxe SUV to project. Usable on any Apple iOS device, the app plays a video and then scans the viewer's face for emotional cues. The video changes based on the viewer's responses to on-screen images, so theoretically, two viewers shouldn't see the same video. The app achieves this by noting 34 "facial landmarks" based on an "emotion data repository" filled with "more than 12 million emotion data points" provided by 3.4 million faces from 75 million countries. At the end of the film, the app suggests a Bentayga configuration, from colors to veneers to wheels. Now fresh from the effort, the prospective customer can apply all of his or her energies to fine tuning the result. You can download it from Bentley's site or the app store, watch the video of how it works above, and check out the press release below. Related Video: BENTLEY INSPIRATOR: PERSONAL PREFERENCE BROUGHT TO LIFE - Inspirator app is the next generation of digital car configurator - Emotion-recognition technology interprets users' facial expressions and generates vehicle configuration - Bentley Inspirator application available to download now at www.bentleymotors.com/inspirator and in Apple App Store (Crewe, 21 October 2015) Personal style preferences can now be transformed into recommendation, with Bentley's latest innovation: the Inspirator. The application monitors the users' facial expressions and reactions and interprets them in order to configure the perfect Bentley for them. Utilising any iOS device's camera function, the application's facial and emotion recognition software measures and analyses the viewer's emotion based on nuanced facial expressions. 34 facial landmarks are identified at 15 frames per second, as the viewer reacts to stimulating film content. The accurate emotion metrics algorithms are built using the world's largest emotion data repository – 3.4 million faces have been analysed in 75 countries amounting to more than 12 billion emotion data points. The viewer's reactions dictate a unique film narrative; the film changes according to what the user responds to most positively, but also deciphers their preferences, creating a unique configuration revealed at the end of the film.