King Charles III of the United Kingdom is a great fan of cars and a fervent militant of ecology. Thus, there is a vehicle in her collection that combines both passions and, therefore, is one of the jewels in her garage: it is the Aston Martin DB6 MK2 Volante that her mother, Isabel II, gave her in 1969 for the 21st her birthday.
It is his pampered car, the one he has been seen with the most over time and, both for sentimental reasons and for its overall quality, it is the one he enjoys driving the most, even if it is only a few kilometers from time to time.
It is not for less: it is the model that replaced the legendary DB5 (the one made world famous by Sean Connery in his role as James Bond) and the first of the brand that was designed 100% on British soil – the traces of the DB4 and DB5 were born in the Italian study Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera–, and that with a 4-liter 6-cylinder in-line engine perfectly combined elegance and sporty power, delivering no less than 285 horsepower.
This Seychelles blue vehicle is so important in the life of the monarch that, concerned about the future of mobility, he decided to make it his spearhead to reduce his carbon footprint: so one day in 2008 the then-Prince Charles drove general awareness of emissions and climate change to the extreme and wondered why not adapt it so that it could run on biofuels. For example, why not, with cheese and wine.
Already with this operation, it was the car chosen by Prince William to drive at his wedding with Kate Middleton, on April 29, 2011. It was also the vehicle with which the brand new King went to his frequent polo matches, the sport of which is fond
In England they say that he is one of the highest representatives of the Aston Martin brand, along with James Bond. His mother, meanwhile, adored Land Rover 4x4 models, which she even drove until she was 90 years old.
The idea may initially sound like a whim worthy of a person accustomed to luxury and eccentricity, but it has a basis: according to research, in combination with petroleum-based fuel, it could serve to generate an alternative with less environmental impact. atmosphere.
“Carlos only traveled 300 to 500 kilometers a year in the Aston Martin, but he wanted it to be respectful of the environment. It just so happened that our bioethanol supplier made the fuel from surplus English white wine," Sir Michael Peat, private secretary to the then Prince of Wales, said at the time.
In this sense, Peat also explained that the wine in question comes from their own vineyards in the county of Wiltshire: instead of discarding what is left over and that is not suitable for human consumption, they take advantage of it by selling it to the Green Fuels company, also English, which submits it to the chemical process to convert it into fuel.
With all this in mind, Carlos entrusted the work to Aston Martin's own engineers, who, together with the specialist in the RS Williams Ltd brand, managed to adapt the engine to be fed with E85-type bioethanol, that is, composed of a 85% due to organic waste, in this case English white wine and the whey used to make cheese, and the remaining 15% with a fossil fuel, such as unleaded gasoline.
In short, bioethanol is obtained through a fermentation process of organic materials, just like biodiesel.
“At first the engineers were not convinced that the conversion would work, but I insisted that it would be a success,” Carlos III recounted in the October 2018 issue of Wallpaper magazine. "So when the conversion was done, they had to admit that the car now runs better than ever," he celebrated.
With these changes, funny as it may seem, your consumption could well be measured in bottles of wine: from the 24 liters per 100 kilometers that your Aston Martin DB6 MK2 Volante used to consume, now you need something like 2.8 bottles of wine per kilometer .
But the most incredible thing of all is not that, but rather it is told by those who were close to the moving car: when the engine is running you can perceive an unmistakable aroma of cheese and wine.
