Will a luxury car lose street cred if it starts talking about fuel efficiency?

Over the past decade, American rappers and hip hop artists have taken Bentleys out of the pages of glamorous lifestyle magazines and plopped them into music videos, such as those seen here and here.

At the ongoing 2008 Geneva Motor Show, Bentley CEO Franz-Josef Paefgen announced the luxury car company’s new strategy for meeting customer expectations in combining increased eco-friendliness with old-school performance and style.

According to Bentley's research, their cars go an average of just 7,000 miles a year, generating less than 4.4 metric tons of CO₂ during that period.

Just for comparison, the U.S. Department of Energy website fueleconomy.gov estimates that a 2008 Rolls-Royce Phantom generates about 13.1 tons of CO₂ a year and a 2008 Toyota Prius emits about 4 tons of CO₂ during the same period. The website doesn’t mention the average annual mileage for each car though.

Still, by 2012, Paefgen said, all Bentley models will be “capable of delivering less than 120g/km of CO₂.” That translates to at least a 15 percent reduction in current Bentley CO₂ emissions. As part of the improvements he outlined, starting next year, all Bentley engines will also be able to handle renewable fuels.

Not hybrid technology, not electric vehicles or hydrogen. Bentley’s decided biofuels are the best way to go. The other technologies, it says, still rely on fossil fuels, which defeat the purpose of finding a renewable alternative to gasoline.

Paefgen noted that “whilst in absolute terms Bentley cars represent a small portion of these global automotive CO₂ emissions,”—for the first time in its 90-year history, the company sold over 10,000 cars last year—“we are convinced we have an obligation to act, and will be taking significant steps to reduce our fleet’s impact on the environment.”

The artist formerly known as Puff Daddy helped make Bentleys a music video staple once; maybe Sean Combs will find the new Bentleys match his ever-changing name again.