Bentley Bentayga EWB review: Who doesn’t love a mash-up?

At the height of their pop superstardom, ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson were asked the secret of their song-writing success. Sometimes, they revealed, they’d simply play two old songs over the top of one another to create a new one, the combination creating a previously unheard set of melodies, or a hook from which they could build.

In modern parlance this would be called a mash-up, and the resultant sampling has any number of benefits — not least of which is an easy familiarity with the blended outcome. And if you doubt that works, see what happened when Madonna extracted 30 seconds of intro from ABBA’s own ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ to kick-start ‘Hung Up’, which went to number one in a record 41 countries and sold more than five million copies worldwide.

Witness, then, the Bentley Bentayga Extended Wheelbase (or EWB) pictured here. Less an all-new track, and more a rework of two of the Crewe-based carmaker’s greatest hits: the best-selling, go-anywhere Bentayga SUV and the voluminous luxury of super-sized saloons for which the marque is historically lauded. It’s the same, only different.

It’s the same in that the base architecture of the upscale 4×4 is as you were — super-smooth V8 and V6 hybrid powertrains, a bluff, imposing façade, wheels the size of the moon and a beautifully appointed cabin awash with Bentley hallmarks that include quilted stitching upon finest leathers, open-pore veneers and hewn-from-solid switchgear. But it’s different in that aft of the front passengers is an additional 180mm (around seven inches) of extra legroom which — perhaps surprisingly given that doesn’t sound so much — lifts the already ample business-level accommodation to the giddying heights of first class.

And lest you should doubt the analogy, know that as an option in place of the regular, three-seat rear bench you can specify two spectacular airline-style seats that adjust in all directions and can lie almost flat, should the travails of the outside world prove too much.

So, a mash-up it is — a luxury limo with all-weather capability and a vantage point from which to look down on the world. Best, undoubtedly, experienced from a passenger perspective than that of a driver.

I mooted this much on a flying trip to France’s Burgundy region for a pre-Christmas wine stock-up, watching the expansive French countryside flash by through an elongated rear window while in a semi-reclined position with a glass of something nice already in my hand. Well, the rear armrest contained a wine cooler with crystal glasses, it would have been rude not to.

And yet… this is a Bentley, also replete with driver credentials. So, for all the super-luxe accoutrements, assembled by craftsmen dealing in ultimates, I was troubled by the notion that the man up front might be having more fun than I was. So, I made sure to helm the return trip to offset my FOMO, and there, on point, were all of the virtues you might expect to find in what a grumbling, Le Mans-defeated Ettore Bugatti once described as “the fastest trucks in the world”.

There’s masses of underbonnet heft — our car’s four-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 engine with 542 horses will do that — and it pours on cross-continent velocity like cream from a jug. Brakes the size of dustbin lids melt away speed as progressively and as easily, leaving recumbent passengers to snooze for miles on end in a cabin filled with little more than a distant hum. First class indeed.

Better still, from a pilot’s perspective, this bulk shrinks around you, so this can be a driver’s car, too. Four-wheel steering means response to directional change is pin-sharp, deliciously direct and instant, even on the twisties when redirecting a car of this bulk. It’s a Bentley, after all. But the duality that created this car is never far away — it’s big and super-luxe, yet quick and agile, can go most places but is a delight to sit in among traffic. When two become one, as it were. Though I think that was a different tune altogether.

Hung up? I’d say so. This is probably the ultimate mash-up, and an extended mix at that.

Bentley Bentayga EWB

542bhp
568lb/ft
0-60mph in 4.5 secs
180mph
406 mile range
£211,300

For more information, visit BentleyMotors.com. This review originally appeared in issue 357 of Attitude magazine.