We've all heard the slogan “don't drink if you drive”. However, nothing says that we cannot put alcoholic beverages in our car deposit. This seems to have been the reasoning of Prince Charles of England when he decided to convert his Aston Martin DB6 Steering Wheel so that it would work with fuel made from white wine.
The European Union has very strict limits on wine production, and any excess production cannot be sold to the public, being reused to create biofuels. From then until the heir to the British throne (who is a well-known environmentalist) deciding to transform his Aston Martin to consume these biofuels was a matter of time.
So Prince Charles decided to convince Aston Martin engineers to make the conversion. At first these were not receptive, claiming that the conversion would spoil the engine. However, the royal persistence was such (he threatened to stop driving the car) that engineers there went ahead with the conversion.
An Aston Martin DB6 Volante that runs on wine?!
So, after the conversion, the British royalty Aston Martin started to consume wine instead of gasoline. Well, it's not 100% wine, but bioethanol (E85) made from a mixture of gasoline, white wine and whey. Despite initial reticence, Aston Martin engineers eventually admitted that not only did the engine run better on the new fuel, it also delivered more power.
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This is not the first time Prince Charles has insisted on converting British royal family vehicles to alternative fuels. After having had a large part of the car fleet transformed so that they could use biodiesel, the most recent conversion carried out by the heir to the throne led the royal family's convoy to switch from using diesel to using used frying oil.
