2025 Bentley Bentayga Speed review

If you’ve watched the Netflix series Yellowstone you will want to go to Montana. If you haven’t it comes highly recommended by me and everyone else I know who’s seen it, and then you too will want to go to Montana. If you actually do go to Montana, you’ll be wanting to go back to Montana pretty much from the moment your aircraft eases off the Tarmac at Bozeman airport.

It’s the kind of place you’d expect to exist only in your head. It’s bigger than Germany but has fewer people living in it than Birmingham. Its largest city, Billings, is home to only slightly more residents than Eastbourne. In this one state, there are more cows than the combined human populations of Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds, which means they outnumber people by over two to one, and hang out on no fewer than 28,000 cattle ranches. Come here and watch your horizon peel back to distances hitherto never imagined.

So it’s not hard to see why Bentley chose it to introduce the world’s media to its new Bentayga Speed which only sounds like a poor relation to the previous Bentayga Speed to those who don’t get past the hard fact that where once lurked a 6-litre, 12-cylinder engine under that bonnet you’ll now find a 4-litre V8. But hang on, have we not been here before, with the Continental GT and Flying Spur, and do they not more than make up for their shortfall in capacity by adding a powerful hybrid to the mix? They do. The Bentayga, does not. Why not? One engineer told me the result would be too heavy, another that it was difficult to integrate into the car’s SUV architecture, but as you can buy a V8 hybrid Porsche Cayenne which sits on the same platform, I’m not quite sure what is the precise difficulty here.

In any case it really doesn’t matter much, because for reasons too boring to explain here, the big W12 engine could never reach more than a very modest state of tune, which is why despite the 12 having half as much capacity and half as many cylinders again as the V8, the new smaller engine actually develops more power than the older, larger unit – 641bhp as opposed to 626bhp. You might notice too that the 0-62mph time has been dramatically cut from 3.8sec to just 3.4sec and conclude a vast tonnage of mass has been saved with the 4-litre motor. But actually, no: this Bentayga Speed is just 30kg lighter than the old, the reduction saying more about a smarter launch control programme than anything to do with power or weight.

Talking of electronics, if you specify carbon ceramic brakes, your Speed will come with a new mode for its stability control that will allow the car to perform extravagant drifts in the right conditions, though one wonders how many owners will feel so moved to try it. Many more will spend the additional £7700 required to equip their Speed with a new titanium Akrapovic exhaust system and I can’t say I’d blame them.

“The engine is remarkable and misses the hybrid far less than I had imagined”

If there is a problem with the car it is simply one of time, in this case too much of it. The Bentayga is now into double figures, the oldest car in its competitor set and in many ways it’s remarkable how well it still stands up. One reason for this was the fixing of the frumpy original styling, but even that was now several years ago and both inside and out the Bentayga is looking – how can I put this politely? – somewhat mature. It is therefore perhaps as well that cutting edge design is not what Bentley customers tend to prioritise most in their cars, and if you move the agenda onto build quality inside and out, both perceived and real, it’s still as good and quite possibly better than anything else out there.

The upgrades that come with choosing a Speed over a standard Bentayga (which still has a 4-litre V8, though in a more modest state of tune) are a mixed blessing. The engine is remarkable and misses the hybrid far less than I had imagined: it’s as fast as anyone could want a car like this to go and the off-boost lag is but a fraction of that seen on the likes of the Aston Martin DBX707. But the chassis has been stiffened so much that in sport mode the ride is no longer what you’d want from a Bentley. It’s good enough in comfort but is not in the same street as even a Continental GT, let alone a Flying Spur. And while I did try out the drift mode, which functioned as advertised, it does seem a gimmick in a vast luxury family SUV.

Even so, this is a better car than the previous 12-cylinder Speed, but what’s needed is an essentially new Bentayga, with up-to-date styling and state-of-the-art hybrid mechanicals. I understand that will happen, but not until 2028 by which time the current car will be only too grateful to receive its pipe, slippers and rocking chair. For now I find it difficult to see what it brings that’s truly important to justify the £40,000 price walk up from a standard and somehow still excellent Bentayga.

Bentley Bentayga Speed

• Price £219,000
• Engine 4.0 litres, eight cylinders, petrol, turbocharged
• Power 641bhp @ 6000rpm
• Torque 626lb ft @ 2250rpm
• Weight 2395kg (DIN)
• Power to weight 268bhp per tonne
• Transmission Eight-speed automatic, four-wheel drive
• 0-62mph 3.4sec
• Top speed 193mph
• Economy n/a mpg*
• CO2 n/a g/km*
• Verdict Improvement, yes, but ageing.