Bentley Bentayga review: the only SUV here that can do sand and Savile Row on the same afternoon
4.4/5motorssouq Editorial Team
The V8 is the Bentayga to own in Bahrain: strong enough to never feel wanting, cheaper to run than the discontinued W12, and available with genuine local factory backing through Behbehani Brothers. It is not a car that will excite a driving enthusiast, and it should not be judged as one — judged as a way to move a family, a lot of luggage and a genuine off-road capability between air-conditioned comfort, nothing else in this market does the job as completely.
Pros
- Genuine low-range off-road capability, unusual for this price bracket
- 2020 facelift interior finally matches the price — dramatic upgrade over the 2015 original
- Air suspension deals with both sand and Bahrain's patched highways equally well
- Factory-backed dealer network (Behbehani Brothers) for parts and service
- V8 is a genuinely sensible choice — quicker to react and cheaper to run than the old W12
Cons
- Width makes older Manama parking structures genuinely stressful
- Fuel consumption stays double-digit L/100 km even with the smaller V8
- Rear-seat middle passenger still sits over a raised transmission tunnel
- Servicing costs are a real step above a Range Rover of similar age
The original 2015 Bentayga was a car everyone respected and few genuinely liked to look at. The 2020 facelift solved that with a cleaner front end borrowed from the Continental GT's design language and, more importantly, replaced the interior wholesale — the switchgear, the digital instrument cluster and the overall fit finally feel like they belong in a car costing this much, which the original never quite managed.
Underneath, it is the same story that made the Bentayga a genuine sales success in the Gulf: a stretched version of the Porsche Cayenne/Audi Q7's MLB platform, air suspension with a real amount of wheel travel, and a permanent all-wheel-drive system with a low-range transfer case — a specification most rivals in this price bracket have quietly abandoned in favour of pure road manners.
Sand, speed bumps and the causeway
That off-road hardware is not a marketing footnote in Bahrain. The Bentayga will genuinely cross soft sand at Sakhir with the right tyre pressure and the terrain modes set correctly, which is more than can be said for a Range Rover-badged rival's equivalent electronics-only system on paper alone. On the road, the same air suspension that handles dunes also swallows Budaiya Highway's expansion joints without complaint, and the ride height clears speed bumps that catch lower cars out.
Space and the V8 case
Five real seats, a genuinely usable 484-litre boot, and a cabin wide enough that middle-seat duty is not a punishment make this a legitimate family car, not just a status symbol with room for two. The 4.0-litre V8 is the sensible engine choice: the W12 that used to top the range is gone from the current lineup in most markets, and the V8's 542 hp is more than enough weight to move at pace while costing noticeably less to insure and fuel around Manama.
Running one in Bahrain benefits from the same factory backing as the Continental — genuine parts and trained technicians through Behbehani Brothers rather than a grey import supply chain. That matters more here than the badge does: air suspension and complex electronics on an SUV this size are not something a generic workshop should be improvising fixes for.
Who it is for
Buy it if you want one vehicle that does the school run, the causeway trip to Riyadh, and an occasional weekend at the dunes without ever feeling out of its depth in any of the three. It is not a driver's SUV in the way a Porsche Cayenne Turbo is, and does not pretend to be — it is a very fast, very comfortable, genuinely capable machine that happens to also be the most expensive thing in most school car parks.