RUNNING the car around fast slaloms, sweeping curves and sudden harsh turn-and-stop maneuvers has the Bentayga handling more like a sedan than you would think.
THE NEW Bentley Bentayga shifts a lot of the parameters that surround the way we think about cars, about luxury, and about enthusiast driving.
You could list all the different bullet points about the big ultra-luxury vehicle, but the truth is that doing so could belittle the fact that the sum is greater than its parts.
Yes, it is extremely expensive and exclusive, but that is almost a given. Cost and exclusivity are a function of how much money you throw at it, and how much people are willing to throw back.
Some brands can say “we are exclusive, we are only building this much of this special, and they are way more expensive than the Bentayga,” but that is just adding stuff onto what already exists in a hope to ride along the move upwards.
Plus they are talking about the Bentayga as a base model, which probably doesn’t hold.
The money going into and going for the Bentley Bentayga isn’t meant to pretty up, but rather to rethink completely how something so large handles.
Spending time on the road and track with the SUV makes it very clear, there is more engineering and technology in the big and tall section than in the sporty sedan or sportscar market.
On the handling side of the fun equation, the Bentayga uses a 48 volt power system to make the suspension handle more efficiently and more quickly and more smoothly.
The normally mechanical anti-roll bar is split into two with electric motors in the middle. What this translates to is the feeling of the Bentayga being flat around hard corners when most SUVs would be swaying sideways.
Running the car around fast slaloms and sweeping curves and sudden harsh turn-and-stop maneuvers has the Bentayga handling more like a sedan than you would think.
The system can work so efficiently that engineers have to keep some feel dialed in so that the driver actually feels what the body would be doing if not otherwise handled.
But the advantages aren’t just on the track. If the computers sense a bump, they make the particular individual wheel move upward in order to alleviate the feeling that would normally be transferred to the occupants. This is arguably the most advanced road vehicle suspension in the world.
So no, you aren’t just paying for a fancier name on better leather. You are paying for a rethink of the driving world, and you are paying for boarding early.
DON’T even wonder why Bentley is a media favorite.
In testing the Bentayga on track, we ran it through several of the exercises that are meant to put sports sedans on their limits.
Sudden full-on acceleration followed by hard braking, and immediate left-right swerves put multiple and extreme forces on vehicles, pitching weight and mass forward and back, this way and that.
The Bentayga handled this with laughter and glee. Literally, because we all laughed and clapped when we went through the exercise. Given what we knew should have been happening, the Bentayga was surprisingly unbothered.
On fast slalom courses, the car has to handle left-to-right-to-left weight and mass movement—and again the Bentayga stayed surprisingly flat. So much so that you would be in danger of going wide toward the end because the safety systems just keep everything settled so well.
On fast curves of different radii, the car was simply wonderful. It was fleet and fast, isolating you from an otherwise plebian outside world.
In the cut and thrust of city traffic and rain, the Bentley is easy to drive and see out of, with none of the visibility problems you would expect from something bigger and stronger than most other things on the road.
You could spend entire pages discussing the intricacies of the Bentayga systems, and it is truly a pity that most buyers won’t even bother experiencing them to their fullest on a race track.
Really though, the SUV is an example of getting what you pay quite handsomely for. Assume the usual Bentley goodness of course. You can “bespoke” the daylights out of it, and order it up with a rearward-facing seating option out of the boot if you wish to watch your horses run on a lazy afternoon (event specification), for example, or give it all-terrain specs with underfloor protection and special off-road settings for the Drive Dynamics Mode system.
You can tell the Bentley crew that you’re a smoker so you get ashtrays and cigar lighters, or that you spend a lot of time in the (desert?) sun and need the package that includes electrically operated rear side window blinds and double sunvisors that is funnily called “Sunshine Specification.”
You can configure it for use as a Grand Tourer (as if it isn’t both grand enough and a pretty awesome tourer already), which adds adaptive cruise control, a heads-up display, lane assist, traffic assist, night vision and more.
As per Bentley’s usual, you can mix and match leathers and woods of the highest quality with 17 piano-finish exterior paints, 15 leather hides, and four different veneers just acting as the starting point.
Plus there is that optional “Mulliner Tourbillon by Breitling” dashboard clock which uses a special mount to make sure that your complicated timepiece stays appropriately wound up.
THE Bentley Bentayga checks all the appropriately upscale boxes, as sumptuous and luxurious as you wish it to be.
Pushing all this luxury around is the awesome Bentley W-12, a 6-liter 12-cylinder that produces a claimed 600 hp and a massive 900 Nm of torque.
Bentley engineers say it will hit a hundred in 4.1 seconds, and will go past 300 kph on the very well-appointed dashboard, and we have no reason to doubt those numbers.
The car launches off the line when you want it to, and just keeps on pulling. It is not big or brash or loud; this is not a vehicle for those that need noise and bling to know their place in the world.
Other more normal engines will probably be announced soon, but for now the biggest of hearts is what fills this beast.
And don’t think that pushing the Bentayga through the air is a chore; it has a drag coefficient of 0.24, so power is used efficiently by the body as much as by the computer-controlled management systems.
Yes, the Bentley Bentayga checks all the appropriately upscale boxes. It is as sumptuous and luxurious as you wish it to be.
If you want to make a statement, the car will most definitely comply. But the big new SUV is about the abilities within, more that the show without.
You could say that it currently beats everything in its class, but you would be wrong. Because technically there isn’t anything else in its class.
Some new offerings in this ultra-luxury ultra-capable class are in the pipeline, and indeed much is being made about them now. But most of those that claim to be competitors are merely attempting to give people bragging rights as they move their own product.
The Bentayga is a wholly different, and holistically complete—a new game changer.
More importantly perhaps, it is an indication of both the possibilities and the directions of the modern motoring world.
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