SPORTY BENTLEY
embodying the driver’s multifunction display.
Lee insists the general shape and proportions
of the EXP 10 are realistic. “It’s not some la-la
land concept.” The doors are the right size to get
in and out of, and there’s enough room inside—
the mechanical bits would fit. Mind you, a couple
of rival-company designers at Geneva reckoned
it would be hard getting the headlamp position
through the current impact rules. Whatever. The
front has a shorter overhang than a Continental,
which implies better weight distribution from
moving the engine backward relative to the
wheels. Ah, the engine. A topic on which Bentley
is keeping mum. Lee lets on: “It could be a hybrid
drive, for torque. And the benefit of being in the
VW Group is we can get platform parts.”
So what platform could it use? On the other
side of the Volkswagen Group, Porsche is work-
ing on a matrix called MSB. This has a longitu-
dinal front engine and RWD/AWD. It’s for the
late- 2016 Panamera, among other things, and
it’s lighter than the current Panamera skeleton.
Dürheimer suggests a production version of the
EXP 10 could be the MSB. “But it’s not all fixed.
You can carry over our corner units [suspen-
sions, driveshafts, brakes, hubs] and put them in
a new structure.”
A few minutes after the EXP 10 Speed 6 had
been unwrapped, Dürheimer gave me its elevator
pitch: “Bentley has always been in love with the
idea of a punchy, powerful two-seater.”
In love with, but never actually building. Even
back in the ’20s, when WO Bentley wanted to
make a faster car, he didn’t make a smaller or
lighter one, but instead added size and power. So
the four-cylinder 3.0-liter car grew into the long,
weighty, six-cylinder 6.5-liter. The hotted-up
version of that, the 1928-30 Speed Six, won Le
Mans twice and so you can see why Bentley has
reprised its name for this new concept. But that
granddaddy Speed Six certainly wasn’t the lithe
two-seater the marque is trying to invoke now.
Here then is a two-seat supercar that shrinks
Bentley’s sporting but high-luxury vibe into a
more agile package—a car to go against the Aston
Martin Vantage and its successor, and the AMG
GT and, three years from now, the Maserati
Alfieri. If you accept a paring-back of the cabin
luxury, you could include the rear or mid-engined
stuff like the 911 Turbo and the Audi R 8 plus the
ever-growing range of McLarens. The competi-
tion thinks there are customers out there. After
all these years, Bentley is close to finally allowing
itself to join in.
‘Here is a supercar tHat sHrinks bentley’s
HigH-luxury vibe into a more agile package’
84 TOP GEAR PHILIPPINES WWW.topgear.com.ph