Official: Bentley will replace its W12 with a V8 hybrid packing more than 740bhp

Bentley’s 6.0-litre W12 is no more, this much you know. The company’s twelve-cylinder thunderstorm is bowing out after two decades and 105,000 units shifted, and in its place as the next-generation, top Bentley powertrain will be [drumroll]… a hybrid V8.

A hybrid V8 with a lot of horsepower. Bentley’s calling it the ‘Ultra Performance Hybrid’, which will use a “potent hybrid system to create what will be the most advanced and most powerful powertrain in Bentley’s 105-year history”.

Bentley already builds a hybrid – a 2.9-litre V6 – and this new UPH will apparently build on that unit and move “even further in the level of performance and efficiency it brings”.

Most powerful. This new V8 will produce more than 740bhp – at least 90-odd horsepower more than the W12’s final hurrah in the GT Speed – as well as offering a 50-mile range running purely on electrons.

Torque? No specifics, only that it’ll be in the ‘four-figure’ range and delivered over a ‘wider plateau’. Bentley is claiming a CO2 figure of less than 50g/km, too.

Bentley’s current 4.0-litre V8 already sounds fairly mischievous, a little ill-tempered, and judging by a new teaser clip released today, the next-gen hybrid V8 will… sound just as dark. Bentley says it’s an “exquisite combination of cross-plane bass with a free-revving growl”. We say: it very, very good.

More will be revealed in the coming weeks…