Bentley Bentayga Hybrid
REPORT 2
£157,800 OTR/£198,790 as tested/£1,700pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Does downsizing and plugging in a big, luxurious SUV actually work?
DRIVER
Rowan Horncastle
I’VE BEEN LUXURIATING IN THE SUMPTUOUS EXPERIENCE THAT IS the Bentayga Once you’ve got in and allowed the invisible butler to soft close the doors behind you you’re cocooned in a double glazed bubble of wood and rich cowhide and flutter off in silence The problem comes miles later when you either run out of electricity or require more than bhp Which happens as soon as you exit an urban environment
It is then that the worryingly unrefined V engine fires into life and does its best to take up the slack Unfortunately for the Bentayga’s big facelift it didn’t get the new bhp twin turbo ‘hot vee’ litre V the new Flying Spur Hybrid does Instead it’s got the older single turbo V shared with Porsche and Audi with bhp less A combined bhp is well down on any other Bentayga the V has and the W an even mightier bhp Worse still the hybrid is around kg heavier thanks to all that hybrid tech and batteries that sit below the boot
The gruffness of the engine actually puts you off driving the Bentayga quickly as there is a notable coarseness and un Bentley lack of refinement at higher revs Plus at tonnes it gets a little wayward on its air springs not helped with a slightly odd steering rack and brakes that don’t blend the transition from hybrid regen to physical pad meets disc interaction very well
There are three driving modes on offer Sport Bentley and Comfort In anything but Sport where the engine is on constantly the transmission hiccups into action as a brain somewhere takes a while to compute what drivetrain to use So I don’t bother with any of that preferring to drive the Bentayga in Comfort while stuck in urban traffic under the power of electricity Which is the first time I’ve said that I guess it’s good news for Bentley’s electrified future though