Cars
Broken Dreams: Bentley Hunaudières. Remembering Ancient Laurels
Bentley’s 1999 Hunaudières fused luxury and power, previewing the Bugatti Veyron with its 8.0-litre W16 engine and timeless design.
There’s an old Neapolitan proverb that says, “Too many roosters in a hen house is never a wise choice”. They soon learned this lesson even in Ingolstadt, at the Audi headquarters, when Lamborghini, Bugatti and Bentley began to present concepts designed to trace their futures. A future that, in the case of Bentley, was rooted in a distant past full of pre-war racing and victories at Le Mans, as well as the present in which the traditional aristocratic British style was flanked by the noble Rolls Royce.
To touch the strings of passion, in 1999 Bentley decided to repropose a formula that took it to victory at Le Mans in the 20s and 30s: large cars and plenty of horsepower to chase down a distant goal. Taking advantage of the synergies within the group, they chose the same chassis used by the Lamborghini Diablo while the engine was the powerful 8.0-litre, naturally aspirated, W16 engine producing something in the region of 623 horsepower.
