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2022 Bentley Flying Spur First Drive Review | Purple reign, purple reign

MALIBU, Calif. – When I first moved to New York City in the early 1990s, two careers before I became an automotive writer, I worked as a preschool teacher in Brooklyn. I rode my bike to work from Manhattan each day, over the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the most bountiful opportunities for car-spotting in a city with the nationÂ’s lowest rates of automobile ownership. The most notable vehicle I saw regularly was a stately and very violet Bentley sedan. The only thing more outrageous than its Azure Purple exterior color, and the distinctive rumbling of its signature 6.75-liter V8, was its vanity license plate. Seeming to signify that its owner was a proctologist or gastroenterologist, it read, MD TUSH. As I drove that car's descendant, an excessively purple Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid, I couldnÂ’t stop thinking of MD TUSH, whomever they were. Their flash. Their panache. Their dedication to being seen – even from the elevated bike path of New York's original suspension bridge. One could argue that this is part of the job of an occasion car like this, a $204,000 (base price) sedan that is as long as a Chevrolet Tahoe. It is supposed to make an impact. So it's counterintuitive that the Flying Spur Hybrid always starts off in EV Drive mode, which prioritizes the sole use of the rechargeable 14.1 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. It decidedly does not make an impact. I suppose that one cannot discount the element of surprise. But in that mode – one of three accessed through a metal button on the center consoleÂ’s button-resplendent surface – the big four-door skulks off with eerie silence, and will continue to do so for about 25 miles on the European WLTP cycle (EPA certification has not yet been completed, but it will likely be lower than the EU number), whereupon it needs 2.5 hours to charge with a fast charger of unspecified voltage via a conspicuous port on the left rear fender. As a preview of BentleyÂ’s promised all-electric future – which will begin with its first fully battery powered-vehicle in 2025, en route to a full-line voltaic conversion by 2030 – the Flying Spur has some allure. With its silence, thrust, and uncanny eeriness, electric power suits ultra-luxury limousines.

Bentley confirms SUV for 2016

It looks like the addition of a Royal Baby isn't the only big news coming out of the UK this week. Bentley has ended all of the will they/won't they speculation by confirming today that it will produce an SUV. Earmarked to go on sale in 2016, the as-yet unnamed Bentley SUV will help create an extra 1,000 jobs in the UK.
While no concrete details have been released, Bentley says that it will be the "most luxurious and most powerful SUV" on the market. Past rumors have indicated that the SUV could look completely different from the 2012 EXP 9 F Concept shown above, be renamed the Falcon and offer options like a plug-in hybrid version and three-row seating. To prepare for a fourth model in its lineup, Bentley will be investing 800 million British pounds (around $1.2 billion USD) into its Crewe headquarters and production lines over the next three years. Scroll down for Bentley's press release officially confirming the new SUV.

Odds are on Bentley Mulsanne replacement to be a flagship SUV

Volkswagen Group brand Porsche sells SUVs so that it can afford to pour money into its segment-defining sports cars. For fellow VW Group brand Bentley, that math doesn't work; Porsche sold around 280,000 cars last year, more than 190,000 of them the Cayenne and Macan, compared to Bentley's total sales of 11,006. The English maker, recently recovered from trying times, must therefore be especially choosy about apportioning resources when deciding what to build. When the company looked at the prospects for the Mulsanne, Bentley realized that developing a four-door sedan replacement wouldn't pay off, so designers fashioned the new Flying Spur into a kind of Mulsanne Lite. If a new model from Crewe ascends into the $300K-plus arena, odds are it will be a crossover. In comments to various outlets over the past few weeks, including Top Gear, Car, and Car and Driver, Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark didn't explicitly admit the arrival of a big-money crossover. However, he said almost everything one could say without admitting it. His comments were previewed last year by those of Werner Tietz, the Bentley board member for engineering. On the subject of updating the automaker's lineup, Tietz told Autocar Bentley's goal is to sell to new customers, and for that, "There is some potential when you look at SUVs too, especially around a car larger than the Bentayga if you consider its value to the Chinese and American markets. So, yes, that is one opportunity we are exploring." Five years ago, talk about a Bentayga variant centered on a sleeker coupe style, not something bigger and badder, but much has happened since then. Hallmark explained that the market for mid-six-figure big sedans has dropped to 1,000 sales worldwide, chopped up between the Mulsanne and Rolls-Royce Phantom. Roughly 90% of Mulsanne sales are to under-40s in China and over-60s in the U.S. While "it's a great business ... it's a shrinking business" because aging Mulsanne buyers in the U.S. don't want to drop another half million dollars on a daily driver, opting for a Flying Spur or Bentayga instead. As for the Chinese market, the CEO confessed to Car, "[If] we did a — not to give you the answer — if we did a longer wheelbase Bentayga, every single one of those Mulsanne customers in ChinaÂ… would take that instead."  The Bentayga soaks up almost half of Bentley sales.