Forget the six-figure SUVs from Land Rover, Mercedes and
At least according to the folks at Bentley.
“If you look at the different SUVs on the market today, you don’t really see a luxury SUV, you see high options,” Bentley chief Wolfgang Schreiber said today at the Detroit Auto Show. “Premium SUVs like Porsche or maybe Range Rover are there, but a real luxury SUV you can’t buy.”
This morning Schreiber touted significant sales- and market-share growth at Bentley last year and anticipated a strong 2014 bolstered by the new Flying Spur in China and new V8 S models in the United States.
But a primary focus, he said, will be further development of the Bentley SUV, which is due out in early 2016. Currently in concept stage, the car received some popular acclaim when it debuted last year but was also criticized heavily by the press. Schreiber called the new model, which he has already driven, aesthetically different in almost every way from the one that debuted. Its primary concern--and the focal point of its future failure or success--is the ability to marry a luxury experience inside with performance under the hood, he said.
“It is exactly what you expect for a Bentley,” he said. “You enter the car and you sit in a very nice environment, like in a living room as in our cars today, but you sit in a higher position. So you sit in an SUV, but you sit in a Bentley SUV. And the performance of that car is smooth, effortless. You have the impression that the capability of that car is on a high level.”
The United States and China, where powerful, expensive SUVs (US) and chauffeured vehicles (China) are popular, will presumably be the markets most suited to make such a vehicle succeed. Last year Bentley saw 28% growth in US sales (3,140) but slightly lower annual sales in China (2,199) because the new four-door Flying Spur—its biggest seller there—became available only in the fourth quarter. Bentley sold 950 Flying Spurs in China in Q4 2013 alone.
Until then, Schreiber declined to give more specifics about what to expect from the new SUV but said the way the sum total of how it looks, sounds, feels, smells and drives will differentiate it from the premium SUVs currently offered.
“It’s important to look at a wide range of what luxury means,” he said. “A boat is a luxury good—but also spending time with friends in a nice environment is a luxury good as well. It’s a complete mindset: What you touch, what you see, what you smell, what you hear. All of that has to be one story that tells you it is luxury. That is what we want to create.”
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