Bentley Bentayga V8: fit for a farmer?

A Bentley as a farmer’s car sounds about as far-fetched as an Aston Martin hatchback city-car… Well, they did it, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Albeit, the Bentayga has a bit more to it than the Cygnet.

Harry Metcalfe is back to take you through a whistle-stop tour of the ins-and-outs of the Bentley Bentayga V8, which Bentley themselves have said can more than handle life on a farm.

Bentley Bentayga V8: The Numbers

• 0-62mph – 4.5seconds (on the road, of course)
• 542bhp*
• Top speed – 180mph
• 4.0-Litre twin-turbo V8 Petrol
• Tow weight – 3.5 tonnes
• OTR Price starting at £146,700*

*The Bentayga Harry tests comes with the All-Terrain option (a necessity for life on the farm), along with a few optional extras, bringing the car up to a whopping £181,000!

Let’s start away from the farm and firstly enjoy the Bentayga for what it is – 2.2 tonnes of sheer class. Bentley know a thing or two about making their cars ooze sophistication, and the Bentayga is no exception. Yes, they may have billed it as a “farmer’s car”, but that hasn’t stopped them from kitting out this SUV to the nines.

Equipped with diamond-cut headlights designed to replicate a whiskey glass and an optional chrome grill, you’d certainly be the talk of, well, the farm. Along with quad-exhaust pipes and Bentley GT lights to the rear, the Bentayga also sports 22″ wheels.

Ok, so on the face of it maybe not a great specification for a workhorse. But wait – Bentley has fitted a nifty electric tow bar which you can deploy via a button in the boot – this allows you to tow up to 3.5tonnes. The boot is spacious too, with generous fold-down seats offering up adequate space for your trips to the farmers market.

Beneath the Bentayga is a carbon fibre splash shield (eek) “protecting” the engine. The adjustable air suspension is manually adjustable although you can get the car to do all the thinking if you wish. If you like to take a dip, the Bentayga’s wading ability is just 500mm – compare that to the new Defender, which has wading capabilities of 900 mm – and you might want to have a careful think about which water features you are prepared to cross.

With the optional extra of the ‘All Terrain’ pack, Bentley has added four additional drive modes, called ‘responsive off-road settings’. These four drive modes allow for you to pick a mode to suit the conditions, whether that be Snow and Wet Grass, Dirt and Gravel, Mud and Trail, or Sand. All you have to do is select the applicable mode, and off you go with the optimum settings.

That is until you stop your car to open a gate for instance and the mode resets to Bentley’s Drive mode. This may not seem like the end of the world, but as Harry discovers if you’re in and out of your car, you may soon get caught out and find yourself doing little more than wheel-spinning at the wrong ride height. Apart from this quirk, the Bentayga makes light work of its trip around Harry’s farm.

The open road is where the Bentayga really comes to life. The 4.0-litre engine produces an exciting 542bhp, and Harry notes just how brilliant a job Bentley has done at suppressing noise from the outside world.

Ultimately though, in Harry’s opinion, the Bentayga falls just short of the mark as a farmer’s car.

This is a good place to watch the world go by, and a very useful car. But is it a farmers car? I don’t think it is, it’s just a bit too posh for what I was doing. It hasn’t got that usability, but then again, the new Range Rover hasn’t. I’d put them in their own class, I’d say they were a ‘land-owners car’.

Harry Metcalfe

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Images courtesy Bentley