Bentley Bentayga SUV hits the Nurburgring – clearly not its natural home (video)

The Bentley Bentayga SUV has been caught on video thrashing round the Nurburgring as Bentley continue its development ahead of a debut at Frankfurt this year.

One of the big question the Bentley Bentayga – Bentley’s luxury SUV – will have to answer when it finally arrives in production guise later this year is whether it can compete head-on with the top-end Range Rovers.

Clearly, Bentley has high hopes for the Bentayga – they expect it to double Bentley sales – and are even thrashing it round the Nurburgring to hone its on-road prowess, as the video below shows. The trouble is, the big Bentley looks, and behaves, more like a truck than a Range Rover.

To be fair to Bentley, there is some way to go before the Bentayga is ready to meet its public, but the video does show a lump of a car struggling to cope with the twists and turns of the Nurburgring.

We’re not suggesting for a minute that the Bentley SUV is expected to handle like a Cayenne or a Range Rover Sport, but it does look a lump more cumbersome than the latest Range Rover would in similar circumstances.

That could mean Bentley are aiming for a soft-riding SUV with no real on-road dynamic pretensions – which could suit a Bentley SUV owner – or it could just demonstrate that Bentley are playing with the setup to see what works. This setting certainly doesn’t seem dynamic.

But with a W12 with approaching 600bhp under the bonnet as one of the drivetrain options – as well as a V8, a hybrid and probably a diesel – Bentley are going to have to make sure their SUIV can handle the performance on offer, even round the bends.

It’ll be interesting to see if we get more Bentayga Nurburgring videos with the big SUV looking more wieldy as its launch approaches, or if this video is a fair indication of its eventual dynamic prowess.

Bentley Bentayga SUV Nurburgring Video

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