Bentley EXP 9F SUV Wants To Know "Where Da Ca$h At?"

Derek Kreindler
by Derek Kreindler

Take a good long look at the Bentley EXP 9F. When I asked a few months ago what the next rapper car du jour will be, I didn’t know that a Bentley SUV was coming. Now that I do, expect this to be everywhere that rappers, athletes and plastic-fantastic housewives are, stealing the Maserati Kubang’s thunder with a perverse status display.

Officially a “concept” we all know that Russia, China and the One Percent love luxury SUVs, meaning this thing is a sure bet for production. Oy vey. A 6.0L W12 is under the hood, with a V8 and a hybrid under consideration. The car gets its “concept” reveal at Geneva, but look for it to be on the road on Shanghai, Moscow and Los Angeles very soon. We’ll have better pictures tomorrow when it gets a live reveal.




Derek Kreindler
Derek Kreindler

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  • Tankinbeans Tankinbeans on Mar 06, 2012

    It looks crosseyed with those little opening near the inner edges of the artificially sparkly headlights. It looks like my cat, Spider, but she's actually pretty clever and would kill this thing with fire until it died from it.

  • Naterator Naterator on Mar 06, 2012

    I thought this was the point of the Eterniti? Gross.

  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
  • Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
  • Redapple2 Love the wheels
  • Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
  • Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
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