First Drive: Bentley Bentayga W12 | Rebadged Audi Q7?
Calling it an Audi seems like proper career-suicide? Maybe.
Sometimes the world presents you with something that isn't tempting for the right reasons, and the Bentley Bentayga W12 happens to be one of those. For me at least. Not only do I fundamentally hate the current luxury-SUV-trend (G500 Squared doesn't fall into that equation), rebadging can backfire tremendously. Which it kind of did for the Bentley, let me elaborate whilst you wonder though the words and pictures down below.
Numbers
More dead cows than you eat in 10 years are needed to fully cover the interior in leather. Its massive weight requires half of the northern hemisphere's natural metal deposits to be forged. You get the picture after just these two facts, this car is quite literally the very top of consumerism (currently). It even houses a 12 cylinder, so that not only do you deplete livestocks and resources but also every little bit of petrol left in the planet's mantle. Sure, I'm exaggerating trendmendously but that is what this car is. Both in terms of stats and in terms of emotions it projects onto you when driving.
You'll quickly understand why I call this car insane after reading the most relevant specifications: its kerb weight comes in at 2440 kilograms, weight that is thrusted to a hundred KPH in just 4.1 seconds by a 609 PS W12. Oh, and it uses pizza-sized 400 mm discs up front to slow it all down. Even after hitting the Vmax of an un-suv-like 301 KPH. Performance even the Audi SQ7 won't match. At half the price.
So what's it like to drive? Or to be driven in?
I won’t lie, this machine has to be one of the most comfortable I’ve sat my skinny ass down in. Normally I come home sore after being out and about with a car all day, not this time. I came home feeling like a small army of Chinese masseuses accompanied me the entire day, massaging me into relaxation more than once. No happy endings sadly? Nope, it were the massage seats after all. Insanely good ones.
So that’s sitting down in it, how about driving it? That’s something different, very different. Equipped with 12 cylinders and permanent AWD and double wishbones up front, this car handles like it shouldn’t do with its dimensions. It frankly felt like driving a Ford Focus RS (review here), while being massaged…by those earlier mentioned seats. Ahum. At this point you’re probably trying to wrap your head around how this would feel. Well, good luck. I’ve been trying to ever since I had the pleasure to spend time with it. It’s been some months since then, but yet I remember how easily it ate away all the curves it was presented. It only understeered when you’d expected it to, with oversteer being further away than this car being a ‘green car’. Pun intended.
Luxury
Next to it being lavishly equipped with more hardware than the Audi Q7 it shares a platform with, the Bentley Bentayga is also equipped with more luxury that its common-man sibling. Tablets and touchscreens are everywhere. It cools more than a 50cl bottle of cola in its compartments, if you don’t mind drinking champagne all year round. You won’t see anyone do that in an Audi!
But that’s still not what makes this car scream “I’m more successful than you”, nor does the 1800 Watt optional sound system. The only thing that will really be able to set this car apart from the Audi are the buyers, and what they want to believe this car really is. Whatever they’ll think, this car still confuses me till this day.
