Bentley celebrates 60 years of its V8

Bentley is celebrating six decades of its L-Series V8 that first entered service under the bonnet of the original S2, Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II and Phantom in 1959.

Since then, the famous luxury British car-maker says it has produced 35,898 engines, with the latest 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V8 still taking 15 hours to hand assemble at its Crewe plant.

Despite Bentley's claim that the Rolls-Royce Bentley L-Series V8 is the "longest-serving" engine of its type in production, the current 6.75-litre engine has been re-engineered more than once in the last six decades, although the basic principles and dimensions had remained the same.

Originally, the V8 was designed to offer a "step-change in performance" along with e smoothness, reliability and refinement.

Replacing the Bentley Mark VI, R-Type and S1's six-cylinder engine, the first brief declared the new V8 should be at least "50 per cent more powerful" without any increase in weight or size – hence the move to a 'V' configuration.

Back in the late 1950s, the V8 endured hundreds of thousands of miles in the toughest of conditions, including full-throttle testing, for 500 hours.

In total, the V8 took just 18 months from its initial drawings to completion with the first 6.2-litre V8 actually tipping scales around 14kg lighter than the six.

Thanks to the design, the dimensions allowed the designer to lower the bonnet line of future models.

The move to the familiar 6.75-litres occurred later in 1971, while the turbo only arrived much later in 1982 that boosted power by 50 per cent.

Today, the latest L410 V8 produces 400kW and an incredible 1100Nm of torque, enough to hurtle the heavyweight Bentley Mulsanne Speed to 100km/h in 4.9 seconds before running out of steam at 305km/h.

If you're wondering why the Chevy small-block V8 isn't the longest-lived engine, it's because that engine is now only available as a crate engine. The latter GM LS engine is deemed completely unrelated to the classic Chevrolet V8.