Standing at the top of Big Red, the giant sand hill not far from the Oman border, strong, gusty winds that feel like they come from a fan-forced oven are blowing fistfuls of sand on my face and eyes. The in-car thermometer has peaked at 59°C, having been hovering around a constant 55 all day, and if I could envisage what hell feels like, this is surely it.
At this point, I want to be somewhere else, but we have a job to do, and for one day, I am embedded with the engineering team from Bentley to carry out vital hot-weather testing on their new Bentayga SUV.
The Bentayga is the company’s most-important model since the 2003 launch of the Continental GT, and it has endured a difficult gestation since it was revealed as a concept at the 2012 Geneva auto show. The EXP 9 F concept which toured the region soon after and visited both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, being shown to potential customers, had – to put it mildly – a face only its mother could love.
Roundly criticised not only by the world’s media who stood back and took a collective wince as the covers came off in Geneva, it was also described as “polarising” by those inside the company, who eventually forced the car back behind closed doors for a major stylistic re-think.
The Bentley design director Luc Donckerwolke claimed the concept was to garner reaction (which it certainly did) and thankfully the extreme approach to the company’s styling DNA which took cues from the Mulsanne, which didn’t translate kindly to the high-standing off-roader, have been toned down. The production version will instead share much of its styling genetics with the Continental GT and Flying Spur.
Literally going back to the drawing board put the project on the back foot, but the team has worked overtime to make up the lost ground and, at 42 months from the EXP 9 F monstrosity’s unveiling to production that begins at the end of November, it should be the fastest development cycle of any recent Bentley.
According to Cameron Patterson, director of Whole Vehicle Engineering, 162 development mules have been made, comprising 40 simulators which were hidden under Audi Q7s, 14 hand-built prototypes manufactured in his workshop, 48 VFF (pre-series vehicle acceptance) cars which were assembled on the production line, and a further 60 pre-launch cars ready for the final checklist and sign off.
Two of these cars have been in the UAE to complete a series of tests pertaining to engine cooling and in-car acclimatisation, and The National was invited along for the ride.
Our cars include one of the 14 hand-built vehicles and the first VFF to come down the assembly line. From the outside, both lightly camouflaged cars look identical; however, the VFF includes a near-production-spec interior which features the typical Bentley cues of knurled metal, quilted leather from the 12 hides that will go into each, and the latest instrument clustre that sits nicely within a dash familiar to Flying Spur owners and offering a choice of nine timber veneers.
The other car is a pure workhorse inside – all black with wires poking out of drilled holes and taped onto the consoles aided by rough alligator clamps and some plastic switchgear doing just enough to get the job done.
In my 10 years of living in the Emirates, I’ve never seen the in-car thermometer rise so high, hovering around 55°C and it’s only after we have stopped, ready to confront the infamous Devil’s Plunge sand dunes, that it has climbed to 59°C with heat soak.
This is no press junket. There isn’t any room for fat-cat lunches in air-conditioned hotels or press releases spoon-fed on a USB. There’s no marketing hyperbole about Bentley’s pedigree and rich tradition – it’s too hot for that, and besides, the air conditioning in both cars has just broken down.
“Things break, that’s why we’re out here, to make them break and to get it sorted before the car is released,” says Patterson with only half a laugh. “You chose to be among the engineers today.”
Also with us is Rolf Frech, Bentley’s member of the board responsible for engineering, who is a dab hand at the wheel when it comes to soft-sand driving, ploughing his way up and down some of the trickiest dunes all day.
“One of the things we are working on is to make sure that the interior is at the right temperature with the right distribution of the airflow and as you can see, there’s still some work to do,” Frech says. “Our main task is to do the tuning and calibration for the powertrain and the chassis system and we’ve had different groups of engineers working over here in parallel.”
Our first task is facing off with Big Red and getting comfortable behind the wheel. Its 6.0L, W12 engine is not short of grunt and while the transmission is a bit clunky on the highway as a result of continuing work being done on getting the clutch slip and bite points right for the eight-speed auto, it seems perfectly at home on the soft dunes – the drivetrain handles it with ease.
However, a point where styling has obviously won over practicality is the approach and departure angles that mean we can’t attack the dunes as though it were a Dakar raid car. Being based on Volkswagen’s MLB platform it shares with the new Q7, the Bentayga has relatively long overhangs that house two intercoolers for the twin-scroll turbos, which can be vulnerable in extreme circumstances.
Sitting behind the leather-covered wheel, peering out over a Continental-like dash, the Bentley driver’s view is normally of a tree-lined boulevard or hotel valet reception in near total silence, not an endless vista of desert accompanied by plumes of sand being kicked up from the wheels with a screaming engine bouncing off its 7,500rpm rev limiter. Something or someone is out of its comfort zone and it isn’t the car. It’s me. I’m having difficulty processing that a Bentley can be this aggressive an animal, tearing great chunks of desert from its bespoke Pirelli Scorpion tyres.
According to Frech, the feeling has been mutual among the engineers. “For Bentley, this is a completely new segment. A lot of my people have never driven in sand dunes before. Driving in sand dunes is the most challenging test for an engine because it involves high revs and low speed, so not much air through the radiators.”
While figures haven’t been released, the W12 engine will develop more than 540hp and over 720Nm of torque. On the road, this will be good enough to get it from a standstill to 100kph in less than five seconds and onto more than 275, while still returning a range of more than 600km. Towing capacity, in case you’re thinking of actually using one as a genuine SUV, has been rated at 3,500kg.
Repeatedly devouring the 200-metre-tall sand hills with abandon has left me in no doubt that the Bentayga has all the power in all the right places. This is rammed home again when we hit the tarmac for the return drive and receive a gentle prod over the two-way from our back-up crew in more traditional Japanese SUVs, asking us to slow down.
The W12 engine is 90 per cent new, with a new oil system that prevents surge, and suction pumps that collect oil from the turbochargers when it’s at extreme angles. It also features variable displacement so that half the cylinders shut down to save fuel when coasting and the whole unit is 30kg lighter.
“We’ve adopted a top-down strategy for the engine range so we’ll launch with the W12 first, then the diesel and a plug-in hybrid later,” confides Patterson. “It’s an extremely complex car with more than 100 ECUs (electronic control unit) so getting them talking to each other at the same time – and in the same language – remains a challenge and there will be lots of challenges before we launch.”
As is becoming the norm for all-terrain vehicles, the Bentayga will feature an eight-mode drive dynamics system it calls "Charisma”, which offers settings of snow, wet grass, sand, mud, gravel, comfort, sport and a “Bentley” mode, which is a compromise to suit most situations. Our cars remain in Bentley mode for most of the on-road time and only switch to “sand” for the tough stuff after deflating the tyres. It’s only when the driving becomes really tough that we flick off the ESC (electronic stability control).
A key ingredient to its on-road plush ride and impressive stability off road is a new 48-volt, anti-roll system that should completely eliminate roll without compromising on comfort and will be powered either from its own battery pack, or could become the first production vehicle to be fitted with a supercapacitor.
The motors rapidly turn the anti-roll bars in the opposite direction to the incline to keep the car flat as much as possible and will be standard on the W12 and optional on the V8.
Overall, it’s a tough, hot, sand-blasted day in the back lots of the UAE at the peak of summer on one of the Emirates’ hottest days. You cannot ask for a more hostile environment, and despite repeated runs bouncing off the rev limiter, the Bentayga performs virtually without any incident. Aside from one engine temperature warning and the computer tripping out the air-conditioner every 10 minutes, it’s a successful day in the middle of nowhere.
“Next it’s about refinement and durability, so we are not yet ready and as you experienced today, we still have some things to do, but that’s the point of why we are here,” adds Frech. “These problems are like gold because if we find them now, the customer will not find them later.”
For a car that’s been so controversial, and one that’s so relatively young in its gestation, the Bentayga is a remarkably well-resolved machine that will undoubtedly be a massive hit in this market and elsewhere once it goes on sale. That it’s been developed and tested right here, in the harshest climate extremes, and is more than capable of dealing with off-roading on our toughest dunes – it is, perhaps, the greatest and most-pleasant surprise of all. Let’s just see what it looks like once that camo finally comes off.
Following Bentayga’s launch later this year, deliveries should begin in the first quarter of 2016 with prices starting from Dh800,000.
motoring@thenational.ae
