Bentley Bentayga New Review, Interior, Price, For Sale 2016 - The Bentley Bentayga is a four-seat (with the option of having five seats), five-door luxury SUV built with unibody construction, a Volkswagen Group W12 engine and full-time all-wheel drive. It is based on the Volkswagen Group MLB platform, the same platform used in the second-generation Audi Q7 and the future third-generation Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg, but 80% of the parts are unique.
The Bentayga is Bentley's first production SUV, and it is an evolution of the 2012 Bentley EXP 9 F concept car, though the final design had not been unveiled as of early 2015. The heavily camouflaged test cars that had been photographed so far indicate that the Bentayga will look much closer to the Flying Spur in terms of styling than the EXP 9 F.
Bentley formally introduced the Bentayga at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2015. Production began on 27 November 2015 at Bentley's Crewe factory, as a 2016 model.
Bentley formally introduced the Bentayga at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2015. Production began on 27 November 2015 at Bentley's Crewe factory, as a 2016 model.
Powertrain
The 2016 Bentayga will be the first to receive Bentley's new twin-turbo W12 engine. Initially, the W12 will be the only engine option for the Bentayga, capable of bypassing a cylinder row if needed.The 6.0l, twin-turbo will have an estimated 600 hp (608 PS; 447 kW) and
664 lb·ft (900 N·m) of torque and will move the Bentayga from 0-62 mph
(0-100 km/h) in under 5.0 seconds.
Bentley has officially confirmed the 2017 Bentayga will be Bentley's first production plug-in hybrid, while company executives have stated in interviews that the Bentayga would also get a diesel engine. A V-8 version is planned for 2018.
The 8-speed transmission splits torque with 60% to rear, and 40% to front.
Performance
The W12 Bentayga will have a top speed of 187 mph (301 km/h). The Bentayga uses a 48 volt electrical system to control its electronically controlled active anti-roll bar (EWAS), which helps the heavy SUV reduce body roll.
Production
Originally slated by Volkswagen to be produced at the Volkswagen Bratislava Plant in Slovakia,
the factory where all other models based on the platform are produced,
an agreement was reached with the British Government for the model to be
produced at the Crewe factory.
Bentley has invested £800 million in a new facility in Crewe and hired
1000 new employees to meet the demand for 3000 to 4000 SUVs annually.
Although production of the Bentayga was moved to Crewe, production of
the Bentayga's body shell remains at the Bratislava facility.
A total of 608 units will be made for the first edition, 75 of them to be sold in the US market.
Marketing
Soon after it was announced that Bentley had begun developing a
production SUV, the company promoted the Bentayga by printing the
official URL on the side of the early camouflaged test cars to leverage
the press coverage by automotive photographers.
Bentley Bentayga Interior
Bentley Bentayga Price2016
Price £160,200; Engine W12, 5950cc, twin-turbo petrol; Power 600bhp at 5000-6000rpm; Torque 664lb ft at 1350-4500rpm; 0-62mph 4.0sec; Top speed 187mph; Gearbox 8-spd automatic; Kerb weight 2440kg; Economy 21.6mpg (combined); CO2 296g/km, 37%
Latest Second Hand Bentley Bentayga Cars 2016
Bentley Bentayga review
The strong rear haunch, the diamond grilling on the front: I'm no arbiter of a car’s appearance (for which Bentley should probably be grateful), but if the task was to make it look instantly recognisable, the first job is done.
The Bentayga is an example of how gracefully Bentley’s model line-up has evolved since Volkswagen took ownership of the company in 1998. You can think of it as only the third ‘new’ model to have arrived since: if, like I do, you count the Mulsanne as a replacement for the Arnage, and thus the Flying Spur saloon and Continental coupé/convertible as the other two ‘new’ model lines.
This is at least as significant as those two: an example of the motor industry's overdue recognition that people who have an awful lot of money do not necessarily want to be constantly photographed driving a supercar or mistaken for an airport limousine driver. So they buy Range Rovers specified to the heavens - a fact Land Rover recently seems to have appreciated, too.
I’ve often wondered how far up the food chain the limits of SUVs run, and have suspected it’s quite a lot further even than this £160,200 Bentayga. I suppose Rolls-Royce will find out soon enough.
Meantime, though, the Bentley. Like the Flying Spur and Continental before it, it takes full advantage of Volkswagen Group’s ownership of the British firm.
Beneath it is, ostensibly, the new MLB-Evo architecture that also underpins Audi’s flagship SUV, the Q7 – a car whose price has dipped into six figures, if you remember. And it’s a car that is already pretty vast, so at 5.14m long the Bentayga isn’t that much bigger again. At nearly three metres, the wheelbase is within 2mm of the Q7's and the Bentley will later offer seven seats - though there are no more than five for now.
Coming later too will be hybrid and diesel powerplants, but sensibly enough, from the start Bentley is only offering what’ll be the top-spec motor (until a Speed edition arrives): a new variant of the 6.0-litre W12 engine. Because, let’s face it, if you’ve a car with a 2420kg kerb weight and yet, because you’re Bentley, you want it to reach 60mph in 4.0sec and a top speed of 187mph, you’re going to need 12 cylinders and two turbochargers.
If that sounds thirsty, it is. There’s cylinder shut-down and this new unit is 30kg lighter than its predecessor, but still it only returns 21.6mpg on the combined cycle and emits 297g/km of CO2. During its day with us, although I’ll concede we drove it pretty hard, it returned little more than half of the combined figure.
Those aren’t the kinds of numbers that Bentley would rather you focused on. Instead, try some of these: there are 17 standard, 90 extended paint colours (and any other on request); there are 15 standard leather hide colours to choose from and seven different species of veneer. Again, if you want more, just ask. Our test car rolled up with £48,000 worth of options, which would by no means be an unusual order.
The Bentayga is an example of how gracefully Bentley’s model line-up has evolved since Volkswagen took ownership of the company in 1998. You can think of it as only the third ‘new’ model to have arrived since: if, like I do, you count the Mulsanne as a replacement for the Arnage, and thus the Flying Spur saloon and Continental coupé/convertible as the other two ‘new’ model lines.
This is at least as significant as those two: an example of the motor industry's overdue recognition that people who have an awful lot of money do not necessarily want to be constantly photographed driving a supercar or mistaken for an airport limousine driver. So they buy Range Rovers specified to the heavens - a fact Land Rover recently seems to have appreciated, too.
I’ve often wondered how far up the food chain the limits of SUVs run, and have suspected it’s quite a lot further even than this £160,200 Bentayga. I suppose Rolls-Royce will find out soon enough.
Meantime, though, the Bentley. Like the Flying Spur and Continental before it, it takes full advantage of Volkswagen Group’s ownership of the British firm.
Beneath it is, ostensibly, the new MLB-Evo architecture that also underpins Audi’s flagship SUV, the Q7 – a car whose price has dipped into six figures, if you remember. And it’s a car that is already pretty vast, so at 5.14m long the Bentayga isn’t that much bigger again. At nearly three metres, the wheelbase is within 2mm of the Q7's and the Bentley will later offer seven seats - though there are no more than five for now.
Coming later too will be hybrid and diesel powerplants, but sensibly enough, from the start Bentley is only offering what’ll be the top-spec motor (until a Speed edition arrives): a new variant of the 6.0-litre W12 engine. Because, let’s face it, if you’ve a car with a 2420kg kerb weight and yet, because you’re Bentley, you want it to reach 60mph in 4.0sec and a top speed of 187mph, you’re going to need 12 cylinders and two turbochargers.
If that sounds thirsty, it is. There’s cylinder shut-down and this new unit is 30kg lighter than its predecessor, but still it only returns 21.6mpg on the combined cycle and emits 297g/km of CO2. During its day with us, although I’ll concede we drove it pretty hard, it returned little more than half of the combined figure.
Those aren’t the kinds of numbers that Bentley would rather you focused on. Instead, try some of these: there are 17 standard, 90 extended paint colours (and any other on request); there are 15 standard leather hide colours to choose from and seven different species of veneer. Again, if you want more, just ask. Our test car rolled up with £48,000 worth of options, which would by no means be an unusual order.
Inside there are a few cues that this is a VW Group model, but no
more than you’ll find in a Continental – and the Bentayga benefits here
from being based on the latest VW architecture.
Instead of the
chunky old gearlever that occupies about a third of the transmission
tunnel, the new electronic controller for the eight-speed transmission
leaves more room around it for additional switches and convenience
features. Ditto the steering wheel still gets gearbox override paddles,
but as in a Volkswagen or Audi they’re small and rotate with the wheel,
rather than being the fixed, railway signal box-specification levers of
the Conti.
There’s a digital display between the two analogue
dials and the part touchscreen, part dial-controlled entertainment
system – while still not our first choice set-up in the whole of
motordom – has a level of ease and functionality like no Bentley before
it.
If you’re accustomed to the Mercedes-Benz/Audi
rotary dial on the transmission tunnel, though, you’ll instead reach
accidentally for what turns out to be the drive controller.
The
Bentayga gets four on-road drive modes and four off-road ones, for the
air suspension and four-wheel drive transmission with Torsen centre
differential.
Off-road nobody at Bentley pretends that the new
SUV is a specialist off-road vehicle, but the Bentayga did give a
surprisingly good account of itself on a rough and difficult Spanish
trail.
The console-mounted rotary control is available with
different off-road driving regimes - juggling throttle sensitivity, ride
height, traction control and gearchange regime - and there's also a
separate hill descent control switch to control this heavy car's
downhill velocity on slippery slopes.
The traction was excellent
on loose and greasy uphill gradients, and even up against a couple of
extreme obstacles, artificially configured to test both the car's
stability on side-slopes and its traction with one wheel in the air, the
Bentayga did very well indeed.
Best of all, the enduring cabin
comfort belied the extreme nature of the manoeuvres; you had to watch
from outside to appreciate how extreme they were.
Bentley admits
that the Bentayga's arrival, departure and break-off angles are ‘not
quite as good’ as a Range Rover's, but it hardly matters. The Bentley is
clearly much better off road than the vast majority of its owners will
ever require it to be.
While on the road the standard air
suspension provides the kind of isolation we’ve come to expect, with the
very occasional echoey ‘bong’ over sharp surface ripples but an
otherwise composed and particularly serene waft. It doesn’t matter that
much whether you’re in Comfort or Sport (or the default, ‘Bentley’) on
the dial, because it’s never over-firm thanks to a new system of which
Bentley is rightly pretty proud.
The electrics are by a 48V
system because the Bentayga gets active anti-roll bars and the extra
juice is needed to make them respond with suitable vigour and speed.
There are electric actuators that act to stiffen or loosen the anti-roll
bars depending on what you’re doing, so on a straight they’re slack and
loose and allow lots of wheel deflection, while in a corner they
quickly stiffen to reduce body roll and keep the movements of what is,
let’s face it, quite a big body, in check. It works with remarkable
effect, feeling better to me than adaptive damping, which stiffen the
dampers come the corners but unsettles the ride more in the process.
The
Bentley, then, feels pretty natural, retaining its comfort while simply
adding additional control when it needs it to the way it goes down the
road. There’s remarkably little roll and when, if pushed, it eases into
relatively early understeer, you look at the leather and veneer, the
turned aluminium air vents and their organ stop adjusters, and just
remind yourself that you’re in a Bentley, not a Porsche Cayenne
.
Having
a W12 engine – no matter how compact in theory it is – in the nose
presumably does little for the agility, but it does lots for the
performance. The torque curve peaks at 664lb ft at 1350rpm and stays
there until 4000rpm. Peak power, 600bhp, is through 5000-6000rpm,
although there’s relatively little point taking the engine all the way
there.
At lower throttle inputs and revs it’s smooth enough, but
revved harder it fails to sound particularly special or expensive.
Bentley hasn’t said whether the V8, so good in the Continental, will
find a home here too (because it’s quite busy selling the first couple
of years of W12 production, so why would it?), but the Bentayga wouldn’t
hurt for a bit more 'woofle'.
There’s also – and I’m being picky here, but this is a £160,000 car
so we can afford to be – the occasional snatch in the drivetrain.
Perhaps it’s the gearbox’s ‘coasting’ modes, which disconnect the engine
from the transmission when under no load in order to improve economy.
But when it takes it up again it’s not always seamless.
I am being
picky. By and large this is an exceptionally comfortable, and always
impeccably quiet, big SUV. Drive it smoothly and it’ll reward you with
its oily smooth electric steering - a good speed, and with servotronic
so it quickens towards the limits of its lock - its calmed ride and a
really impressive sense of cabin isolation.
Bentley has
established a reputation as a maker of sporting cars that must also be
luxurious. It’s hard enough in itself to make a luxury saloon that can
do the thick end of 200mph in safety and security while fulfilling the
‘luxury’ part of the tag.
Now throw on top of those demands the
additional need for this vehicle to travel, as it will be asked to, into
sand dunes or across frozen steppe, or to tow several tonnes of horse
and trailer, and you start to appreciate the task Bentley has set
itself.
It would, presumably, have been easier if it didn’t have
to worry about the whole 187mph thing as well, but it’s to its great
credit that it hasn’t. I’d think that, in all of motoring, only the
Porsche Cayenne and some variants of the Range Rover Sport
get set a remit you’d consider as broad as the Bentayga’s – and the
Bentley has to achieve it with the trappings of all that wood, aluminium
and leather while it’s doing it, too.
No wonder it took them a while to get around to it. In the end, though, it was well worth the wait.
