Bentley SUV To Dominate Luxury Market With W12 Engine
October 11th, 2011October 11th, 2011
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2011 Bentley Continental GTWolfgang Durheimer, Bentley’s CEO, has recently said that the SUV his company is working on will be built on the Porsche Cayenne platform and will be powered by a W-12 petrol engine. This means the British luxury carmaker will be the first company to offer a 12-cylinder engine on a luxury SUV. Durheimer also said he is extremely happy with this idea and he think this will show everyone “who’s the boss”. The engine on the upcoming Bentley SUV will be the next-generation of the current W-12 engines used on the Continental range.
Even though there were no comments whether the SUV will be offered with other engine choices too, Durheimer stated that he would like the engine bay to be enough for a “V” engine too, despite the advantages offered by the “W” architecture. So if everything goes as planned, a V12 TDI engine will be offered a few years after the car’s debut. The unit will be borrowed from the Audi Q7 and it’s a 6.0-liter unit delivering 500-hp that is based on the engine used by Audi to win several Le Mans races.
The upcoming SUV will keep all of the features that made Bentley famous: the conservatory design language, fine leather and wood trims for the interior and extremely powerful petrol engines. According to Durheimer, the SUV is scheduled to debut in 2014 and will offer a lot more than what the other British luxury SUV, the Range Rover, offers. We don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but what’s interesting about the launch date is that it is scheduled at about the same time as the car’s direct competitor, the Lagonda SUV from Aston Martin.
As for the people questioning the profitability of this model, Durheimer says he’s really confident in this market and apparently the best response to the recent downsizing campaign started by most carmakers is this powerful SUV. According to him, 99 percent of all Bentley owners also drive an SUV, so by launching this car Bentley is offering them an option to upgrade from Range Rover, Audi Q7 or Porsche Cayenne.
[Autocar]
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