Bentley Bentayga boot space, practicality and safety

Enlarge0videoEnlarge135photo

• Five-seater gives the most boot space
• Powered tailgate standard
• Can tow significant loads

With all that wood veneer, quilted leather and deep pile carpeting, the Bentayga’s hardly the last word in practicality.

Although, it is available with seven seats and all cars get a remotely-operated powered tailgate as standard. The air suspension offers four ride heights too, meaning it’s possible to lower the car to allow your passengers easier ingress and egress. 

Inside there’s enough room for four adults to travel in outright luxury no matter what the seating arrangement, and you’ll squeeze a fifth smaller person in too if you’ve opted for the requisite number of perches. If you’ve opted for seven seats, they’re best left for children.

There are four cup-holders and cubbies dotted all around the cabin, including usefully large door bins and spaces for smartphones and sunglasses all neatly integrated and finely finished.

It isn’t unrealistic to expect the Bentayga to be employed as a tow car. There’s an electrically deployable ball on offer as an optional extra, the suspension will self-level and lower at the rear to make hitching easier and the braked towing weight is 3,500kg – up there with the best cars around. Just bear in mind that those figures are only applicable to the V8, you can’t tow with the Hybrid.

Boot space and storage

The boot measures 431 litres in the most luxurious four-seat mode, but because of the configuration of the rear bench this extends to 484 litres if you go for the five-seater. Removing the hinged, leather-bound parcel shelf unlocks 590 litres of load area, while folding the rear bench means 1,774 litres is on offer.

Enlarge0videoEnlarge135photo

Opt for the plug-in hybrid and it shrinks to 479 litres. Plus (as seen above) there’s nowhere for the cables to live.

Some customers will be pleased to note that Bentley has patented what it’s calling an Event Seat. This is a board that extends out of the boot floor for you to use as a picnic perch, and comes with downlighters for the bootlid as part of the Event Specification package.

Is it easy to park?

No car this size is that easy to park. But visibility is pretty good and it comes with parking sensors and 360 degree cameras. However, the rear camera isn’t covered, meaning it easily gets grimey and the image it relays into the infotainment screen gets worse and worse until you clean it.

There’s also an autonomous parking system on offer. We found it works fine most of the time, but is confused sometimes by where kerbs start.

View dimensions in the Bentley Bentayga specs pages

Safety

• No Euro NCAP score forthcoming
• Platform shared with five-star model
• Array of optional kit on offer

While the Bentley Bentayga hasn’t been crash-tested by Euro NCAP (which isn’t unusual – none of the firm’s cars have), it shares its basic platform with the Audi Q7 and that scored a maximum five stars for safety.

Standard fare on the Bentayga includes driver and passenger front and rear side curtain, and front and rear seat thorax airbags. Crash detection and mitigation systems are installed too.

There are a number of extra-cost features you can specify to make your car safer still. The Touring Specification features radar-guided adaptive cruise control, a lane-keeping assist function, self-driving in traffic jams and a night vision system along with a head-up display to project vital details such as sat-nav instructions onto the windscreen.

Enlarge0videoEnlarge135photo

There are a few things that aren’t on the Bentayga’s price list at all that you can get in other cars, such as night vision, and it’s a little disappointing to see so much of the safety equipment is optional. That’s normal for a premium car like this, however.