Bentley Bentayga Review 2024

Even when considered against other luxurious SUVs, the 2016 Bentley Bentayga is a very tempting option. Granted, there are far cheaper SUVs - such as the excellent Audi Q7 - that do a fairly similar job, but none of those have the quality, craftsmanship or heritage of a Bentley. Of the other super-SUV choices, the Lamborghini Urus is the racy option and the Rolls Royce Cullinan is the wafty option, while the Bentayga sits slap bang in between and provides a good mixture of both. Strong in every area, so a great all-rounder.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Range Rover had the luxury SUV market all to itself, but those days are long gone as every luxury car maker with an ounce of business sense attempts to cash in on the enormous popularity of SUVs.

Bentley isn’t alone in chasing this piece of the pie with the Bentayga. Porsche did it years ago with the Cayenne, while Rolls Royce and even Lamborghini have since followed with the Cullinan and Urus, respectively.

Aston Martin will shortly join the party with the DBX, and every time the Ferraris and McLarens of the world proclaim for the zillionth time that they’ll never offer an SUV, their words are met with increasing amounts of scepticism.

Some will argue that all this constitutes these great brands selling out and dumbing down, while others will argue that they’re merely giving the people what they want. Whatever the case, these cars are here to stay.

Judged purely on its own merits, you’d have to say that the Bentayga does a very good job of giving buyers what they want.

You’ll make your own judgment on the way it looks, but the brash styling and desirable Bentley badge ensure that it always gets noticed. Climb inside, and you’ll find every ounce of the quality, craftsmanship and class that Bentleys are famous for, with beautiful materials and flawless assembly standards.

The cabin is big enough and practical enough to serve the needs of a well heeled family, or to ferry colleagues between business meetings, and there’s lots of luxury kit, too. On the road, it’s comfortable enough and quiet enough to deliver the first-class experience to all those inside, yet it’s also agile enough to let the driver have some fun when the working day is done.

Yes, none of this comes cheap. Even when you’re buying used, you’re probably facing a six-figure sum at least, and no matter which of the various engines you pick - with power outputs that range from potent to preposterous - your running costs will be off the chart. The thing is, if you’re wealthy enough to even entertain the idea of buying a Bentayga, then the costs involved are unlikely to bother you one bit.

Today’s super-SUVs are very distinct in character. The Lamborghini Urus is basically a jacked-up supercar that aims to out-handle all-comers, while the Rolls Royce Cullinan prefers to waft its occupants along on a wave of peace and sophistication. The Bentayga’s character, meanwhile, sits slap-bang in the middle.

Importantly, it does a good job on comfort. It doesn’t really matter which of the car’s four driving modes you select, the air suspension will mop up most minor marks in the road surface, and only a big bump or pothole will cause you any disturbance.

It’s not as comfortable as a Cullinan, then, or a Range Rover for that matter, but it’ll drive away from both around a set of bends. Again regardless of mode, the air suspension does a really impressive job of keeping body lean in check, helped in no small part by active anti-roll bars, while there’s also bullish grip and meaty, satisfying steering.

That said, while the Bentagya changes direction far more crisply than the Rolls or the Rangie, it doesn’t have the outright athleticism of the Urus.

The fastest version, the Speed, uses the flagship twin-turbocharged 6.0-litre W12 petrol engine that the firm is famous for, tuned up to give 635PS.

We haven’t tried the Speed yet, but we have tried the engine in its standard form, which still delivers a very healthy 608PS. It’ll sprint from 0-62mph in just 4.0 seconds, but while that’s an impressive figure for a car weighing two-and-a-half tonnes, what’s more impressive is the smooth, effortless way it achieves that acceleration.

You put your foot down, the engine growls, the world immediately starts moving past your windows much more quickly, and then you ease off and there’s peace once more.

The 550PS V8 petrol engine is half a second slower on the standard sprint, but it’s very similar in character and still feels brutishly quick. For a very brief time, Bentley also did a version with a V8 diesel engine, and if you can find one, it might just be the version to have.

With 435PS, it’s only marginally slower than the petrols, yet it can go far longer between fill-ups, useful when you’ve got a continent to munch through in a hurry. A plug-in hybrid version is also offered, that combines a 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine with an electric motor to deliver 449PS, but we haven’t yet had the chance to try it.

All Bentagygas have an eight-speed automatic gearbox, and it’s fabulous. It shuffles up and down the gears smoothly when you’re pootling along, quickly when you’re getting a move-on, and when you nail the throttle, it kicks down instantly and always finds the right ratio first time.

The Bentayga hasn’t been crash tested by Euro NCAP yet, and because it’s sold in such low numbers, it probably never will be. Mechanically, however, it’s related very closely to the Audi Q7, and that’s a car that’s scored the full five-star rating.

In terms of the safety gear you get as standard, the Bentayga does an adequate job, but it doesn’t go the extra mile as you might expect in a car costing this much. You get six airbags and an autonomous emergency braking system, but most other clever safety features - such as radar-guided cruise control, head-up display, lane keep assist, traffic sign recognition, pedestrian detection and self-parking functions - are bundled up into option packages that cost extra.

If you’re buying a Bentagyga, you probably don’t indulge in too many caravan holidays, but you might well need to tow your speedboat to the south of France occasionally. And it should do the job without a problem. With a maximum towing capacity of 3500kg for braked trailers, it’ll pull as much as pretty much any other passenger car on the market.

The front seats have bags of room and there’s enough headroom and legroom in the back for lanky adults to get comfy, too. Granted, a Range Rover provides a smidge more, but you’ll hardly be feeling like you’re cooped up.

Early on in the car’s life, five seats came as standard, and in these versions, there’s enough shoulder space for three people across the rear bench.

Whoever’s in the middle will have to straddle the large hump in the floor made by the transmission tunnel, though. The seats are split 40-20-40, allowing you more versatility when carrying bigger loads. With all the seats in place, the boot is large, if not as gargantuan as in many rivals.

You might also find Bentaygas with four seats instead of five. This was an option on early cars, and standard in later ones.

The two individual seats can recline electrically and massage you, but they don’t fold down. At the same time these were made standard, Bentley also started to offer the Bentayga with seven seats. We’ve not encountered one of these versions yet, but with the limited amount of space available, we’d expect the two extra pews to be on the snug side.

This is the whole reason you buy a Bentley in the first place. Yes, you’ll recognise many of the switches and dials from cheaper Audi models, but most of the rest of the cabin is made and finished by hand. And the intricacy and precision with which it's all stitched-, screwed- or slotted together shows just as much attention-to-detail.

The feeling of quality this brings cannot be overstated. Yes, an Audi feels posh, but this is another level entirely. If you’re being super-critical, a Rolls Royce Cullinan feels even plusher, but in fairness, the price difference between the two cars is colossal.

The Bentagya’s 8.0-inch colour touchscreen looks a little bit small set into the chunky dashboard of such a huge car, and because it’s an older system than the one found in newer Bentleys like the Continental GT and Flying Spur, it looks dated as well.

The graphics are old-hat, and the responses and screen transitions can also be a little slow. That said, the menus are reasonably logical in their arrangement, so it’s a pretty easy system to find your way around.

The shortcut buttons running down the sides of the screen come in handy, too. It’d be better if there was a rotary dial or some other controller to act as an alternative to the touchscreen functionality, though, because it’d be less distracting to use on the move.

The system supports most of the functionality you’d expect to find, including sat-nav, Bluetooth, DAB radio, a (60GB) hard drive and a wifi hotspot. There’s Apple Carplay, too, but Android Auto isn’t supported.

At the time of writing, prices for brand new Bentaygas ranged between £130,000 for the hybrid and £200,000 for the Speed.

The Lamborghini Urus costs around £160,000, meanwhile (but don't forget that there’s only one high-powered version with 650PS, more than the Speed), while high-end versions of the Range Rover and Porsche Cayenne sit in the same ballpark. However, all those pricetags look positively puny compared with the Rolls Royce Cullinan, for which bids start at quarter of a million. 

However, with cars like these, the list price is little more than a starting point for negotiations. Every buyer will add their own bespoke cocktail of optional extras and luxuries, which will quickly an a five-figure sum to the cost of your car. If you don’t spec at least £30,000-worth, then frankly, you’re not doing it properly.

When such vast sums of money are involved, depreciation losses will be huge, and do bear in mind that depreciation on the Bentayga is heavier than on most rivals.

That’ll be music to the ears of used car buyers, but could prove ruinous for new car buyers. Then again, if you can afford to spend what it costs to buy the Bentayga, you can probably stomach the loss without too much trouble.

Even if you're considering the PHEV or the diesel, you’re probably far more interested in the tax breaks available, or the distance you can go between fill-ups, than you are about exactly how much motion lotion you’re getting through.

Even so, you’ll have virtually zero chance of matching the official figures, key examples being 20mpg for the W12 and 35mpg for the diesel. Meeting the hybrid’s claimed figure of 80mpg, meanwhile, will probably happen the same day that Hades experiences a stiff frost.

Obviously, it’s going to sit in group 50 for insurance, the highest, most expensive one there is, and you’ll also pay comparatively high rates on VED tax.

Having said all that, though, if you can afford to buy a Bentayga, a steep insurance premium, or the cost of a now-metaphorical tax disc, is unlikely to put you off. Bentley doesn’t feature in very many reliability surveys, so it’s tough to predict how reliable it’ll be as it gets older, but if something goes wrong on an out-of-warranty car, you’ll be facing a big bill.

Trim levels aren’t really a thing where Bentleys are concerned. The various different versions are separated by their level of power, rather than the kit they come with, which is fairly standard across the board. That said, there’s no such thing as a ‘standard’ Bentley.

The level of equipment that comes included - which includes climate control, LED headlights, automatic wipers, cruise control, a panoramic roof, heated leather seats and all the various infotainment and safety gear mentioned earlier - is merely a starting point for how you spec your car using the vast array of weird and wonderful options available, many of which will set you back five figures.