RE: Why Bentley has to build its SUV
Discussion
TAXI!ali4390 said:
I don't think people have a problem with the fact Bentley are releasing an SUV, it's the fact it looks, well, like that!
Clicked to write a comment and realised that the first comment was exactly what I would have written 
At least the Cayenne actually looked vaguely Porsche - the Bentley looks like a Chinese rip-off of a "insert generic 4x4 here".Twincam16 said:
Wills2 said:
Its not like they haven't done it before.
IIRC the Dominators were rebodied Range-Rovers. Not sure Bentley itself had anything to do with them.The Bentley Dominator was a four-wheel drive SUV, commissioned in 1994 by the Sultan of Brunei. Bentley would eventually produce six Dominators for the Sultan, each with identical specification but different colour schemes. Exact details of the car are very sketchy - but we do know that Bentley borrowed heavily from the Range Rover for the four-wheel drive hardware, and that one Dominator was finished in bright Royal Yellow, with two others in metallic grey and bright red.
The Dominator is one of a host of specials which the Sultan ordered in the early-Nineties to essentially keep Bentley from bankruptcy. The cost of the project was estimated at £3,000,000 per car. Knowledge of the Dominator only entered into the public domain after British auto magazine Autocar published a story using scoop photographs of two Dominators being loaded onto a jet destined for Brunei.
Read more: Bentley Dominator - Wikicars
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Twincam16 said:
chickensoup said:
Is it just a reskinned Cayenne?
Wouldn't surprise me. I thought Bentley were back on track with the Continental GT V8, but this is just plain wrong.Thing is, if you're the sort of person who is rich enough to afford a Bentley, if you want an off-roader too, you'll already have a Range-Rover. In the mindset of the kind of person who can afford this sort of thing, it's totally unnecessary - it will only really make sense as a kind of one-car-downsizing cost-saving.
Also, the reason why these emergent economies like their 4x4s is because their road networks aren't as polished and developed as the Western world's, so the extra grip and ground clearance is important. Are those wheels really going to cope with the rough stuff?
Contrary to what the spokesman said, Bentley doesn't 'need' an SUV. Bentley is part of the Volkswagen-Audi Group, and therefore Bentley already 'has' an SUV. It's called the VW Toureg. Or the Audi Q7. Or the Porsche Cayenne. Doesn't matter how many people buy one over the other, the money ends up going to the same central source.
I think what he actually means by 'Bentley needs an SUV' is 'We are VAG and we therefore have to platform-engineer ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. We can't help it. It's an addiction. Help. Please. Get help.'
VAG are creating far too many overlaps and it's running the risk of rendering entire marques irrelevant in the way British Leyland did. look at Skoda and Seat - Seat's in trouble because there's nothing to differentiate them from Skoda. Then look at Volkswagen - people only really buy the models with equivalent Seat and Skoda counterparts because of the old build-quality-led 'image' of a car with 'prole cart' stamped on its nose. Then there's Audi, half the range of which is joined at the hip with Volkswagen and only really bought because of marketing and the nebulous concept of 'residuals', which only make sense if you sell your new car every coulple of years. Now, with these SUVs (plus the Porsche SUVs), it seems Bentley, Porsche and possibly Lamborghini are becoming yet more VAG badge-engineering projects.
Why can't they rationalise things? If I was running VAG, Bentley would only make luxury saloons and cabriolets, Volkswagens would be cheap and dull, livened up with the odd GTI. Skodas would be quirkier, used to try out offbeat design concepts. Seats would be genuinely sporty Alfa Romeo contenders, entered for every Touring Car championship going and with no MPVs or 4x4s in the range. Audis would only be available with 4WD, and I'd enter them in rallying rather than VW. Porsche would do sports cars and nothing more. Lamborghini would do supercars and nothing more.
It's called 'delegation' and 'specialisation'. Tends to avoid making things irrelevant, then redundant.
As for the big SUVs - what's wrong with the Audi Q7? You could stick any one of these engines, from the big VW diesel to the silently refined W12 petrol via the sporty turbocharged V8. The same factory makes all these SUVs, the engines come out of the same place. Audi's the marque in the stable with the 4WD prowess and the off-road experience, and people are willing to spend any amount of money from VW basic up to near-Bentley opulent on them.
Bentley does not need an SUV. This is just a case of VAG saying 'because we can, we will'. BL used to think like that, and as a result we no longer have Triumph, Wolseley, Riley, Vanden Plas, Austin, Morris, Rover - et cetera. All because before they were killed off they were all forced under the same umbrella and platform-engineered into irrelevance to the point where they were sold on image alone.
The minute the economy wobbles, or one car's image slips, it's bye-bye-umpteen-decades-of-engineering-heritage.
And you have to give the market what it wants and the new economies are demanding exactly this type of model. So as a car manufacturer, you have a choice, diversify and survive. Or keep doing what you've always done and fail.
I just hope Bentley take heed of the overwhelming negative reaction to this abomination.
Regards,
Mr. CC.
[quote=Twincam16]
Why can't they rationalise things? If I was running VAG, Bentley would only make luxury saloons and cabriolets, Volkswagens would be cheap and dull, livened up with the odd GTI. Skodas would be quirkier, used to try out offbeat design concepts. Seats would be genuinely sporty Alfa Romeo contenders, entered for every Touring Car championship going and with no MPVs or 4x4s in the range. Audis would only be available with 4WD, and I'd enter them in rallying rather than VW. Porsche would do sports cars and nothing more. Lamborghini would do supercars and nothing more.
It's called 'delegation' and 'specialisation'. Tends to avoid making things irrelevant, then redundant.
Twincam has nailed it with the above and said it far more eloquently than I could have.
Why can't they rationalise things? If I was running VAG, Bentley would only make luxury saloons and cabriolets, Volkswagens would be cheap and dull, livened up with the odd GTI. Skodas would be quirkier, used to try out offbeat design concepts. Seats would be genuinely sporty Alfa Romeo contenders, entered for every Touring Car championship going and with no MPVs or 4x4s in the range. Audis would only be available with 4WD, and I'd enter them in rallying rather than VW. Porsche would do sports cars and nothing more. Lamborghini would do supercars and nothing more.
It's called 'delegation' and 'specialisation'. Tends to avoid making things irrelevant, then redundant.
Twincam has nailed it with the above and said it far more eloquently than I could have.
I don't think it's a "has to", I think it's just jumping on the band wagon.
And I personally don't have a problem with them building one, as long as it doesn't look that. It's grotesque, to the point that I'm starting to believe (hope?) that it's just to throw us all off track and generate a bit of PR for them... Slim odds though I imagine!
And I personally don't have a problem with them building one, as long as it doesn't look that. It's grotesque, to the point that I'm starting to believe (hope?) that it's just to throw us all off track and generate a bit of PR for them... Slim odds though I imagine!
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