Bentley Bentayga Diesel: Car Review

The nearest I ever get to actually owning a really fancy car, that is apart from casual acquaintance with press vehicles, is the manufacturers’' websites where they allow you to indulge every fantasy and “build your own” set of luxury wheels. Out of curiosity, and without checking the price tag of the SUV Bentley Bentayga I was trying out on your behalf, I blindly, and blithely, decided to see what I consider its closest competitor would cost – a suitably specced-up Range Rover.

I was interested to see the range of options, including a long wheel base version of the Rangie I’d not considered before. I went for a 1970s shade of burnt orange plus whatever other luxury options were available from Land Rovers Special Vehicles division.

The lot came to £161,850. That, I thought, must be about the same as the Bentayga. Then I checked the spec sheet for the Bentley, and noticed that adding a few extras to the £135,800 basic retail price (a comparative bargain you might argue), brought it up to £198,155.

If you wanted to go and frolic in Bentley’s Mulliner bespoke service, I’m sure you could bid it up to a quarter of a million or so, and it will look the part. (For example, they’ll do a Bentayga in “Bamboo” – a two-tone orange and beige paint job, which makes it look like some sort of mandarin cheesecake pudding on wheels).

You can pretty much please yourself; tailor-made fly-fishing or falconry kits can be fitted into the Bentayga’s boot, for example, or a cubby hole for your cuff links in the rear armrest). Had I known the value of what I was about to take charge of before I climbed up into the cabin I would have driven it even more carefully than I did.

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So the question someone asked me when they saw me in this ridiculously big car stood; why would someone pay another £50,000 for one of those when they can have a Range Rover instead, and spend the “change”, about twice the UK’s average annual wage, on, I don’t know, a Mini Cooper or two, or a terraced house in South Yorkshire, or a party. Of course the answer is that you buy the Bentley Bentayga precisely because it costs such a premium even when set against a top-of-the-range Range Rover.

Economists understand this as “conspicuous consumption”, and there are few things more conspicuous than a Bentayga. By way of a footnote I should add that the clientele for s kind of car tend not to choose between Rolls-Royces, Porsches, Bentleys and Range Rovers but buy one of each instead. Less hassle about deciding, I suppose.

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Anyway it was an American economist of about a century ago, Thorstein Veblen who came up with the concept of conspicuous consumption in his classic world “The Theory of the Leisure Class” – “conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure”.

That was a time, as now, of great and alarming inequalities in Western society, and have to confess as someone driving around in a Bentayga and thus impersonating a contemporary gentleman of leisure I felt fairly uncomfortable (emotionally not physically). I didn’t feel right in it, and it didn’t seem to be the sort of car that attracted the right sort of appreciation that, say, a Ferrari does. Just resentment I suspect. Except, that is, around our offices at Kensington in London, where it was fairly commonplace and unremarkable.

It is big and imposing. Instead of trying to ape the Range Rover’s classic lines or the slabby-sidedness of the Porsche Cayenne or Jaguar F-Pace, say, Bentley have tried to graft onto their creation some old school styling cues, such as the “hips” running into the wings and the familiar Bentley face. These aren’t exactly handsome touches, and they don’t especially add t sense of balance, but it is still miles better looking than a Cayenne, the ugliness of which will never mitigated by familiarity.

What I should have found more remarkable was the fact that this Bentayga is a V8 diesel – an unusual enough configuration, but also the first ever diesel-powered Bentley car. I guess that so many large heavy SUVs need diesel power to make them remotely economical to run, as well as offering a bonus for off-road use, that I was sort of expecting it to have diesel.

At any rate it is the fastest diesel SUV in the world, but I’d say not enjoyably so, and it is even a little hesitant from rest. It demands to be driven in “Comfort” rather than its “Sport” setting, where it is brisk enough anyway.

The average owner won’t especially care that the V8 diesel delivers more miles for his gallon of fuel either. I’d rather have the wondrous W12 petrol engine instead (that’s kind of two V6 engines shoved together). A plug-in hybrid using a V8 petrol unit and electric motor is also on the way, which should be an interesting technical proposition, and, a bit, green.

The interior is typical Bentley. The key thing to look out for a sign that Bentley aren’t dropping their standards is the veneers on the door cappings; the grain of the timber mirrors the other side’s, a detail that maybe even many owners don’t notice, but is there because the craftspeople at the plant in Crewe make sure of it, as they have for generations of Bentleys and, in the old days, Rolls-Royces that were built there.

The quilted leather is soft and sumptuous, and the hides sourced from the higher mountainous regions of Europe, where the cattle suffer fewer insect bites or nicks from fences that would spoil the even quality of the leather. The deep pile overmats warm and cosseting, the seats massaging and infinitely adjustable for even the oddest shaped humans.

Tellies front and the back help keep everyone happy; the hand-stitched steering wheel is heated, and the heads up display and controls are easy to use. Mien came in a grey-blue Thunder paintwork, with beige leather and contrasting stitching, and a light stained “liquid amber” wood trim.

It would be remiss of me if I failed to point out that this Bentley, as a VW group product, as much in common with other VW Group products, particularly the Audi Q7 SUV and, in due course, the next VW Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and – a truly terrifying spectacle this one – Lamborghini Uris, which are all more or less variations on the big VW SUV theme.

Neon of that is a bad, thing, of course, as all are, or will be, fine cars in their own right. Just as a Skoda is a value version of an Audi these days, so too is an Audi a cheaper, or less expensive, version of a Bentley. But such an inconspicuous machine that could never satisfy the ambitions of a modern gentleman of leisure.