Our friends at AutoGuide.com have spyshots of the new Bentley SUV running around rather inconspicuously – a rather poetic notion, given that this thing is sure to be the face of vulgarity for the next decade. But contrary to many breathless reports on other sites, this is not Bentley’s first SUV.
In 1996, Bentley made 6 bespoke SUVs for the Royal Family of Brunei. Yes, you read that right. At a cost of nearly 3 million GBP each, Bentley used a Range Rover chassis as the basis for these (sort of) one-of-a-kind SUVs, dubbed the Dominator. Very little is known about them, aside from the bootlegged pics of the Dominator being loaded onto a plane for air freight to Brunei.
Similar to the bespoke Ferraris made for the Sultan, the Dominator doesn’t quite count as part of the annals of official Bentley history. But these cars were indeed made by Bentley, baring Bentley VIN numbers – and they weren’t the only ones. When you’re as wealthy as the Sultan, you can pay Bentley, Ferrari or any other OEM to build custom cars for you. Not just custom trim and color combos, but actual designs and road-going concept cars. And yes, he did ask for a series of Bentley wagons to be built. Sadly, none appear to be brown.
The way that thing looked, it could easily be a present upscale Korean offering.
Bet it’s GVW was exactly 1.5 times the weight of the current LR4.
Fat bastard.
I gotta say I like the looks of the Dominator better than the cute ute looks of whatever the new one will be called. Talk about brand dilution.
Yes. It looks very similar to a La Forza as well. I can’t help but feel if the Dominators had a bit bigger headlamps, and the separate corner blinker like the Arnage, they would’ve presented much better.
I was thinking that too. And I own a LaForza.
Although the LaForza design dates back to 1985, 11 years before this Bentley.
I’ve only seen the LaForza online, but man, it’s a cool looking vehicle.
Maybe someday I’ll see one in person. And maybe a Lamborghini LM002 too.
Why isn’t this here? It would have sold like hotcakes. Bentley/Rolls left billions on the table. I’m not normally for corporate floggings but the executive responsible for product development during these years should be beaten until he’s purple. What a wasted opportunity.
Too early on to consider Bentley as an SUV manufacturer. It would have been quite against their heritage.
Didn’t BMW and Porsche prove that matters little?
Yes they did, LATER. Not in the 90s.
Touareg with a Bentley nose.
Navigator meets Land Cruiser
Ehhh the back looks like a Forester though. Fail.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YWUioVqIxrk/TkxVn7bg5II/AAAAAAAAOWs/pRseATL-xPk/s1600/bentley.dominator.sultan.brunei.3.jpg
I believe I found the interior perhaps:
http://i.imgur.com/vcUvX6O.jpg
Though I would think it to have an airbag by now.
Yeah, and the tires are completely bald after 5k miles of driving.
The first generation Cayenne must have taken notes.
Yes, the W-12 VW Taureg (sp?) was the Bentley “SUV” in drag, and far better looking than this colossaly vulgar offense to the optical nerves…..
They never sold that one here in the States. I’d love a Touareg V10 TDI, but I’d also like to keep my retirement fund…
Don’t know about the rest of the Country, but there were, and still are, several W-12 Tauregs (sp?) floating around marvy Marin County, and Sonoma County……
Looks like exactly what it is – my P38 Range Rover with Bentley clothing stretched over it. Same proportions, same basic stance. Question is, what’s under the hood? Ye old Rover V8, or a RR/Bentley 6-3/4, possibly with turbo? That would be good fun in the desert.
Pretty color sensitive, I think the gray one looks great, the yellow is awful and the red in-between.
It’s definitely the Range Rover ladder frame. They probably worked in conjunction with Land Rover so that they could restyle the body without changing any of the hard points. The major change seems to be with the slope of the D-pillar, which actually isn’t a major constraint of a lot of platforms…especially body-on-frame ones. I’m going to guess that it’s just a Range Rover shell with a Bentley interior, Bentley electrical architecture, Bentley suspension and Bentley running gear. This is before the years when BMW started supplying engines, HVAC controls, etc… to the Bentley models, so this probably has ye old 6.75-liter V8 (still used in the current Mulsanne, BTW), possibly turbocharged.
I agree, I bet it still has all the Rover internal steel structure, just new aluminum clothing. The tailgate window looks to have the same slope, I bet the d-pillers still mount the same as on the original.
I really would love to see under the hood – the Rover v8 is a pretty tight fit, and it is a LOT smaller dimensionally than the RR mill. So could just be a breathed on Rover motor, can’t imagine they left it stock. The 4.0 was pretty wheezy, the 4.6 is much stouter.
The slope of the D-pillar seems far more upright on the Bentley version to me, but you may very well be right. I think you’re definitely right about the engine.
Let’s not forget the Jankel Val d’Isere Bentleys. They made eleven, some of which had one of the most complex all-wheel drive systems ever devised by human ingenuity. I understand there were Rolls Royce versions as well.
See http://www.rrsilverspirit.com/models/1989ValdIsere.htm
These are actually very well proportioned. Rumo[u]r has it Elton John had a pink one.
That red and yellow interior looks like a McDonalds special edition
Mmmm… McKetchup on McCheese. Yum!
Looks like the official vehicle of Ronald McDonald
Less Range Rover, more like Honda Pilot with some last generation of Isuzu Trooper. Bentley would have sold a bunch of these in the 2000’s (a bunch is all relative given the low scalability of their production then & now).
How about a Bentley version of a Ridgeline? That would be a sight for sore eyes!
The new one looks almost exactly like I expect the new Jeep Wagoneer to look like. With a Jeep logo it’d look retro and cool. With a Bentley logo it looks terrible.
1999 Kia Sportage
I guess I’m by lonesome here in thinking they’re attractive for the mid-90s SUV. They bare some uncanny resemblance to the Toyota Land Cruiser of that era but nothing shameful. Looking through the site of one-offs from Bentley I saw what the author assumed is a Bentley Imperial made for a SE Asian country with a heavily sloped front and rear, something close to an early Corvette design that I thought was beautiful.
But the beauty is in the eye of the Beholder and if I had 3 Million quid lying around I would be first in line to have Bentley craft me a one-off monster that people could gawk at and hate freely. Their hatred would merely drive my ego at that point.
Yeah, they should have just dusted off the plans for the Sultan’s custom order and built those. This “new Bentley” looks like another VAG fail.
What do you consider a fail? VAG has come up with quite a few cars that were on corporate platforms or that didn’t *strictly* adhere to their respective brands’ heritages. Some examples are the Bentley Continental GT and Flying Spur, Porsche Cayenne and Porsche Pananera. And you know what? All of them have been runaway successes. I’m sure this one will be a success, too. The PL71 platform really *is* premium, and I’m sure Bentley can do a lot to make the car’s target price of a quarter-million dollars a lot more justifiable.
If VAG were trying to market a Bentley SUV on the low-end Jetta/Golf/Tiguan/A3 platform, we could have this talk. But this hardly seems like a crime to me…
Reminds me of the third generation Oldsmobile Bravada.
Lol those things look mildly retarded!
Lol, unreal. Literally looks like a child’s toy drawing of an SUV, hah
“Sadly none arear to be brown”. Little known fact! There was one brown wagon built, with a diesel and manual no less. But apparently after insisting for years that it was exactly the car he wanted when it was available the sultan simply failed to buy it. Nobody knows why :(
+1