Bentley SUV (Falcon) to be built in Slovakia?

Bentley says it has 2000 pre-orders for the Bentley Falcon SUV and that it is possible the Bentley won’t be built in Crewe but in Bratislava.

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Even though Bentley keep telling us that their SUV – which we expect to be called the Bentley Falcon – hasn’t yet been signed off for production, they are managing to drip information out to keep up interest in the Crewe challenge to the new Range Rover.

January’s news was that the Bentley SUV was close to being signed-off for production (we’ve heard that once or twice) and in February we learnt that Bentley have gone back to the drawing board to produce a new design under the watchful eye of Luc Donckerwolke, Bentley’s Chief Designer, which we expect to be a more dynamic one with cues from the Continental, rather than a square truck with Mulsanne headlights.

So now it’s time for the March instalment of ‘Bentley SUV News‘, and we have Bentley boss Wolfgang Schreiber telling us that Bentley already has 2,000 pre-orders for their SUV (we’re guessing ‘expressions of interest’ may be closer to the truth) before the new design is shown, and before Bentley has decided whether they want to pitch their SUV just above the new Range Rover at around £150k, or do what Bentley dealers want which is a Bentley SUV costing north of £200k.

It seems there’s also discussion within the VW Group about where Bentley will build the Falcon, with a move to have the new SUV bolted together in Bratislava, which already produced other VW Group SUVs.

Bratislava has spare capacity and it would doubtless be easier to add the Bentley SUV to production lines that will already be building cars on the same platform (Q7, Cayenne), but will a Bentley built in Slovakia be acceptable to customers who are buying in to the ‘Britishness’ of Bentley?

Somehow, with a brand like Bentley, it would seem wrong, just as it would if Rolls Royce upped sticks from Goodwood and BMW shifted production to Hungary.

Or are we just being xenophobic?