British luxury brand replaces its flagship Mulsanne limousine with… an SUV
Bentley is about to switch the role of flagship limousine from its elegant Mulsanne to a stretched version of its only SUV, dubbed the Bentley Bentayga EWB.
To be launched globally in the third quarter of this year, the 2022 Bentley Bentayga EWB (which stands for Extended Wheel Base) sees 180mm added to the rear passenger floor and doors of the standard Bentayga in the hope of transforming it from a luxury daily driver into a credible chauffeur-driven limousine.
The British luxury brand also insists the V8-powered Bentayga EWB is its fifth stand-alone model, but also says it will account for 45 per cent of Bentayga sales.
“The Bentayga EWB takes over from the Mulsanne EWB as the pinnacle position of the range,” said Bentley Bentayga Product Line Director Chris Cole during a sneak preview in Brooklands earlier this year.
“The E segment [Mulsanne] is shrinking, while the SUV segments continue to grow, and it creates a great opportunity to do more with the segment and we are pushing further from the D to the E segments.”
Whether or not traditional luxury car buyers agree with the idea that an SUV can actually be a limousine, the Bentayga EWB adds weight to both the bottom line and the roads it drives on.
Brimming with the niceties of life, the Bentley Bentayga EWB will offer everything from a heated rear footrest to a new focus on ‘wellness’ throughout the cabin, which will be available with four-, five- or 4+1-seat layouts offering 392, 484 and 380 litres of luggage space respectively.
The four-seat layout comes with Airline Seats that recline up to 40 degrees and schedule 177 pressure changes in its three-hour ‘wellness’ cycle.
The stretched Bentayga EWB has an enormous wheelbase of 3175mm (the MINI Cooper hatch measures only 3850mm from bumper to bumper) and an overall length of no less than 5305mm.
Critically, it has been given rear-wheel steering for the first time, making the Bentayga EWB’s turning circle tighter than the standard Bentayga’s at 11.8 metres.
But it will also weigh 97kg more than the standard Bentayga, which already tips the scales at 2415kg in V8 form (the W12 weighs another 25kg), with the V8 Bentayga EWB set to weigh at least 2514kg.
The gross vehicle mass is 3250kg, giving owners only 736kg in which to fit themselves, their chauffeur, their bottles of champagne and options such as thick-pile carpets.
It won’t be the heaviest Bentley for long though, with an all-electric Bentayga (sitting on completely different architecture, as per other Bentley EVs) due in 2025.
The Bentayga EWB will only ever be officially homologated with a V8 powertrain, though Bentley won’t be shocked if people ask its Mulliner customisation house to squeeze the W12 into its engine bay.
The low volumes – and added weight – keep the W12 engine off limits for the Bentayga EWB, due to the low volumes and high certification costs, though a plug-in hybrid version is on the books for the near future.
Bentley says the W12 is the high-performance engine, but the EWB is all about luxury, even though it still reaches 100km/h in 4.6 seconds – just a tenth slower than the standard Bentayga – and pulls to 290km/h.
The perfectly square 4.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V8 delivers unchanged outputs of 404kW at 6000rpm and 770Nm over 2000-4500rpm, and the EWB also runs the same eight-speed automatic transmission suspension, all-wheel drive system and suspension as the standard Bentayga, and the same 48-volt system to activate the active anti-roll bars as well.
“We are looking for the Extended Wheel Base Bentayga to be for the owner-driver, or for the chauffeur experience,” said Cole. “It will be an SUV to be experienced, to turn up at the opera as a rear-seat passenger, but drive it yourself if you want to.”
In keeping with the kind of owners who want to sit in the rear and can afford chauffeurs, Bentley is expecting customers to “spec the Bentayga EWB above $300,000 in the US”.
In Australia, the base Bentayga V8 is priced at $378,600 plus on-road costs, so expect the EWB to cost well north of $400,000 – and for it not to be joined by S ($450,200) and Speed ($514,200) versions.
Unlike the Mulsanne limo, Bentley figures show 82 per cent of luxury SUV owners drive themselves, and Cole expects the 4+1-seater to be the preferred option in countries like the Australia, the UK and US.
China, which should combine with the US to account for about 60 per cent of the Bentayga EWB’s global sales, will be almost exclusively a four-seat market.
In Australia, the Bentayga ranked eighth last year in the $100K-plus Upper Large SUV market, where it sold 98 cars compared to the 1110 sales of the segment-leading Mercedes-Benz GLS.
That put the Bentayga lineball with the Continental GT coupe and convertible, which found 100 homes in 2021, while the Flying Spur sedan, as if to prove Cole’s point, found only 21 homes.
The other players in the large, expensive segment include the BMW X7, which has just been heavily revised, the Land Rover Discovery, the Audi Q8, the Lexus LX (the only non-European brand in the segment) and the Range Rover, which will be renewed this year.
Rolls-Royce sold only 15 Cullinan SUVs in Australia last year, and it is the closest thing to a direct rival Bentley sees for the EWB Bentayga.
Bentley claims it had to make 2500 new parts to produce the Bentayga EWB, and it’s now so big that Bentley’s workers remove its front quarter panels and bonnet so it can fit into the paint shop.
The Bentayga EWB also becomes by the biggest machine built on the Volkswagen Group’s MLB architecture, stretching at least 180mm beyond the sister SUVs like the Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Cayenne, Audi Q8 and Volkswagen Touareg.
The Bentayga already sat on the long wheelbase version of the MLB architecture, so the development stretched into the hundreds of millions of euros in investment.
Inside story
While the Bentley Bentayga EWB is nearly identical to its smaller sibling in the front row, the rear seat area is head-shakingly sumptuous.
Even before you climb in, you can see that Bentley turned the rear sunroof around, with the mechanism now at the front, so there’s nothing to interfere with the passengers’ heads. It’s a clever piece of cost-saving, with the exact same sunroof, flipped.
The cabin is longer than in the flagship it replaces, and it’s even longer than the Rolls-Royce Cullinan’s interior.
The rear seats have 22 ways of adjustment, and they’re now so clever (and heavy) that they can sense the surface temperature and humidity of the occupant’s skin, to help it calculate and maintain the “optimal thermal condition”.
They are capable of an astonishing 177 individual pressure changes across their independent adjustment zones in a three-hour window, and the Bentayga EWB backs that up with dual rear air ionizers.
The longer rear centre console has also been redesigned for both the two- and 2+1-seat rear row, and there’s new infotainment front and rear.
Bentley looks to have gone to an enormous amount of effort in detailing the Bentayga EWB’s interior, and that goes beyond new quilting techniques.
Bentley’s head of colour and trim, Maria Mulder, said the company invented new techniques to make ambient light come through tiny holes in the door trims in an elongated quilt pattern.
The holes in the seat inserts range from 0.8 to 1.2mm and required even finer stitching thread, while chromed metal inlays measuring just 0.5mm thick and diamond detailing made from polished steel that’s just 0.07mm thick are scattered around the cabin.
The Bentley Bentayga EWB rides on 22-inch wheels and ride-focused tyres, and is distinguished by its vertical vane grille and, of course, stupendously long rear doors.
The busy sculpting on the Bentayga’s rear door helped its designers hide the enormous length of the rear door, which is now so heavy it needs power assistance to open.
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Keyword: Bentley Bentayga EWB revealed