The rumors about Bentley working towards welcoming a second SUV to its lineup had been floating around for quite a while, but now that the Mulsanne is on its way out, the probability of the Bentayga getting a high-riding sibling seems greater than ever.
As we discussed earlier this week, the reason for Crewe retiring its flagship sedan revolves around the falling demand - while Bentley only found homes for 500 Mulsannes last year, almost half of the 11,006 cars the luxury carmaker sold last year were Bentaygas. And it looks like the company isn't preparing a replacement, at least not in sedan form.
Well, if the Flying B can achieve such numbers using a platform-shared crossover whose front end design splits opinions (much like that of the Mulsanne, by the way), the idea of a second SUV might not sound so strange.
While I'd be curious to see how Bentley approaches the concept of a larger SUV, with a sharper design identity, sales statistics would obviously favor a compact luxury model that would share its underpinnings with models like the Audi Q5.
Of course, such a model could always make for the British carmaker's first production electric vehicle - since the company apparently isn't planning such a model for the following years (more on this below), the advances in battery technology expected to show up later in the decade might just facilitate such a pathway.
For the record, Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark told Car Sales there are no imminent plans for extra SUVs in an interview dating back to last summer, the head honcho didn't exclude this possibility as far as the mid-term future is concerned.
"Are we looking at it [a second SUV] right now? No. Could we imagine doing different twists on SUVs in the future? Yes,” the CEO told the publication.
Of course, Bentley could always stick to the versions-and-editions card for the Bentayga, coming up with a Coupe incarnation, for instance.
Meanwhile, I've brought along a rendering that could portray a flagship Bentley SUV using the recipe mentioned above. Dubbed Stonehenge, this work comes from an artist named Ilya Razumov, who happens to serve Porsche Design.
And while the concept was originally sketched back in 2018, this was polished last November, reaching the form you see in the pair of images above.
PS: While we're talking flagship Crewe models, you can find a BentleyLocomotive in the short film below.
In his quest to bring you the most impressive automotive creations, Andrei relies on learning as a superpower. There's quite a bit of room in the garage that is this aficionado's heart, so factory-condition classics and widebody contraptions with turbos poking through the hood can peacefully coexist. Full profile
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