Bentley Driver Pushes Bentayga Speed Hard on Nurburgring as Development Heats Up

600 horsepower. That's how much oomph the W12-animated Bentley Bentayga packs. Don't expect that to be enough, though - a Bentley Bentayga Speed is coming and you are, most likely, looking at the uber-SUV.

We'll remind you Bentley CEO Wolfgang Durheimer basically confirmed the arrival of the Bentayga Speed back in April, so the timing we have here seems to be just right.

We've seen Crewe applying the velocity-named treatment to a host of its models, but while the Continental GT Speed 's 633 hp means it one-ups the "normal" Conti by 66 horsepower, we must keep in mind the W12 heart of the Bentayga is a new generation of the engine.

As for the upper limit of the Bentayga Speed's power number, the Brit can't overwhelm the future Lamborghini Urus SUV, so 650 hp seems like a reasonable guess.

When it comes to translating the power premium into performance figures, we'll mention the "standard" Bentayga can complete the 0 to 60 mph sprint in four seconds, while offering a top speed of 187 mph (301 km/h). Don't expect these two values to increase by all that much - instead, the special edition will transform the overall character of the car.

In theory, talking about the Speed moniker gifting the Bentayga with a more direct driving experience might sound ridiculous, simply because we're dealing with an SUV.

Nevertheless, we mustn't forget that the 5,380 lbs of the high-riding Bentley are not that far from the 5,100 lbs of the Grand Tourer. Since the British automaker's engineers are so well trained when it comes to marking the scale footprint of a car, the idea mentioned above is anything but ridiculous.

We're glad to see Bentley's test engineers pushing the Bentayga Speed to its limits (check out the video below and you'll understand) on the Ring while the company's new head designer is preparing a styling revolution back at the Crewe headquarters.