Report: VW apparently gives Bentley green light for an SUV, internally named Falcon

There seem to be some rather confusing—or conflicting—reports surrounding Bentley’s efforts regarding their SUV. Not too long ago, CARandDRIVER reportedly confirmed that Bentley’s head of design, Luc Donckerwolke, had “canned” or “binned” the EXP 9F Concept, which received rather mixed reviews.

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But Donckerwolke also shared with C/D that Bentley is still adamant about manufacturing an SUV. However, the new SUV will be a more “contemporary interpretation of an SUV.” Again, breaking downs those words again, it is almost as if they’re hinting at an SUV crossover.

AutomotiveNews Europe has resultantly discovered a report from German publication Handelsblatt that Volkswagen AG has given Bentley the green light for a production SUV. And here’s the rather confusing part. In the newer report from AN, Bentley reportedly said it will be “based on the EXP 9 F Concept.” Semantically, “based” can mean a wide variety of things when applying it to automobile platform sharing. Based can mean something as minimalistic as, various and few underpinnings like chassis and suspension work, to something major like the entire platform, which can be one of Volkswagen’s high-end modular architectures.

Volkswagen has since developed a series of modular car platforms that underpin a vast variety of models throughout VAG’s long list of owned manufacturers in bids to streamline productions and hone in profits and cut costs. Other manufacturers, mass and luxury, are doing the same to “globalize” their market shares for growing markets like Asia.

Continuing with the Bentley SUV, it has been internally designated as the Falcon and is said to retail for around 200,000 euros or $271,000 US. It will be built at Volkswagen’s plant in Slovakia before attending Bentley’s finishing school in Crewe, England.

Bentley themselves however have not confirmed the report.

‘We are still waiting for the official green light from Volkswagen,” a Volkswagen spokeswoman told Automotive News Europe. AN also found that the spokeswoman said production looks “very positive.”

– By: Chris Chin

Source: AutomotiveNews Europe