In a decade of lower emissions we have a Bentley Batur running a 6.0L Twin Turbo engine

In July this year, Bentley motors announced the production of the last batch W12 engines after two decades and over 100,000 units delivered to customers worldwide.

Now, Bentley has announced the retirement of the W12 engine will go donw in history with 16 customer examples of the Batur Convertible to be among the recipients of the final W12 engines, each producing 750 PS as the most powerful iteration of the engine ever developed.

The validation activities include durability for both the engine and whole vehicle, environmental compatibility and sunlight simulation, high speed stability, aerodynamics, noise and vibration, and driving dynamics. More than 120 individual tests in all cover everything from the quality of the surface finish of the gold “organ stop” ventilation controls to the new W12 engine hardware and software. Over 58 weeks of vehicle validation have been scheduled across a pair of pre-series cars – Batur Convertible Car Zero and the Batur Convertible Engineering Car.

The real-world testing campaign started with an extensive 3,000 kilometre , five-country drive across Europe to simulate real world conditions. The route left Germany and travelled through Italy, France and Spain, across mountains, highways and cities, with the cars pausing briefly for an afternoon in Monaco for photography before continuing their journey to Idiada in Spain, where high speed testing will begin on private test tracks.

Paul Williams, Chief Technical Officer for Mulliner, comments:   

“The purpose of an engineering validation public road drive is to test a vehicle’s performance, safety, and reliability under real-world conditions. It allows our engineers to assess how the vehicle operates in a variety of environments, traffic scenarios, and weather conditions that cannot be fully replicated in controlled testing environments. This stage is critical for identifying potential issues, validating system integration, and ensuring the vehicle meets regulatory standards and customer expectations as part of the engineering development test program. At the start of the project it was clear that this car had to be the ultimate open-air Grand Tourer and so every element from the exterior design, engine power and hand-crafted interior has been created without compromise.”

At the proving grounds, the Batur Convertibles will begin seven weeks of durability work on handling tracks, mixed road conditions, high speed testing and abusive surface conditions. During all of these activities data and feedback are collated ensuring the technical targets are being met.