It all started when, for his 21st birthday Charles was given a blue 1970 Aston Martin DB6 Volante convertible as a present from his mum, otherwise known as the Queen.
The heir to the throne drove the car on its usual fossil fuel until he decided he would like his vehicle to be more environmentally friendly. So, he approached the Aston Martin engineers and explained that he wanted the car converted to run on bio-fuel.
“The engineers at Aston said, ‘Oh, it’ll ruin the whole thing,'” Charles told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “I said, ‘Well I won’t drive it then,’ so they got on with it and now they admit that it runs better and is more powerful on that fuel than it is on petrol.
“And also, it smells delicious as you’re driving along,” he added.
After pooh-poohing the original idea Aston Martin now refer to Charles’s DB6 as “a sustainable green machine in line with his myriad eco-friendly endeavours”.
Bio-fuels are created by fermenting sugar and starch from plants and other by-products. So what are the ingredients in the royal super-fuel? Well, English white wine and cheese.
Yes, the royal chariot is powered by left-over wine and whey which is a by-product of cheese-making. No wonder it smells nice.