Filed under: Comment
Ettore Bugatti once famously dismissed Bentley as the manufacturer of the world's fastest trucks. That insult took a step closer to reality with the unveiling of the EXP 9 F concept car at the Geneva Show.
Or possibly not. We overheard one Bentley executive say that the car would be controversial, but that was fine. "It will split opinion" he said. He could not have been more wrong. It united opinion in a way rarely seen outside North Korea. Here is a selection of comments we heard at Geneva (at least the printable ones).
"It looks like a cheap Chinese copy of a Bentley SUV - but where is the original?"
"Land Rover sneaked in and switched the Bentley concept for a joke one."
"The modellers ran out of clay and had to use cardboard boxes for the shape"
"It looks like a 1970s American SUV blinged up by Mansory"
"TVR once changed the styling of the Chimaera when Peter Wheeler's dog took a chunk out of the foam model. This time the dog has done the whole job."
One designer we spoke to (not from Bentley, obviously) said the point of a concept car is to boost the brand by showing what it is capable of. He reckoned this was a rare example of a concept car actually devaluing the brand. Few disagree that a super-luxury SUV is the obvious next model for Bentley, but this clearly isn't it.
With the 2013 Range Rover going even further upmarket - top models are likely to be over £100,000 - there is a narrowing window for Bentley to aim at. With the EXP 9 F (was that a random number plate in the Bentley car park?), Bentley is not squeezing through that window - it is not even getting close to the building next to the window.
It is a mystery why Bentley has taken so long to aim at the SUV market - many expected the Mk1 Touareg to spawn a Bentley. However, this is not a case of "a day late and a dollar short" - it is "a decade late and million short".