Bentley EXP 9 F: What The Hell?

I'll allow you a minute to cry for the lost dignity of the famed British brand.  Bentley will be the next brand to follow Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, and even Maserati into that market that makes purists cringe: SUV's.

So go ahead and sharpen your pitch fork, light your torch and kill three pints of Guiness as you head towards Crewe.  But keep something in mind: car companies, even absurdly exclusive ones, exist to turn a profit.  Know where the high-end buyers are these days?  Know what has a large profit margin?  That's right, SUV's.  You can cry in your soup all you want about the Cayenne diluting Porsche's DNA, but they sell so many of the stupid things that they have money to blow on frivolous, low-profit junk like the Cayman.  Bam, feel better?

Sure, it's a shallow and slightly disgusting marketing proposition.  But Bentley figured that the SUV market is where the big money is, and if they were going to make one, it better be a Bentley.  Unfortunately, they also figured that it should be heinous.  This car puts the "anus" in heinous, phonetically speaking.

To put it bluntly, I can see where the inspiration for the styling came from: Imagine that the gorgeous Continental GT grew some horrendous jowl tumors, then ran headfirst into a wall at 50mph, and you have the front end of the EXP 9 F.  The grille is enormous, as are the headlights and intakes, pushing everything else so far out of proportion it's comical.  Those little tiny inlets flanking the grille look like mistakes, and the front lip is flattened almost to invisibility.  I haven't seen a car this frog-eyed since the Morgan Aero 8.

Thankfully it's less terrible from other angles.  They've done a good job of incorporating Bentley styling into the muscular rear haunches, even if the greenhouse comes off as Range Rover and the rear tail lights look cribbed from an Audi.  Or a Kia.  The oval exhaust tips are nice, as is the brushed stainless trim that runs around the bottom of the car/truck.  I'll stop whining about the exterior though, and show you the good part: the interior, of course.  It's a Bentley.

Which means a mixture of traditional sybaritic luxury (quilted leather, wood polished to a sheen fine enough to comb your hair in, chrome, wool carpets) and modern tech - like that floating satnav screen, the rotary hand control behind the shifter, etc.  It's friggin' swank, and Range Rover has been put on notice as the leader of SUV interiors.

The rear end reminds me of the Holland & Holland Range Rover, but with less fancy shotguns and more silverwear.  Sort of odd, and obviously there'd be no reason to expect that on the production version- but the split folding tailgate that takes the tail lights with it probably will be.

So far Bentley's not saying a lot about the EXP 9 F's underpinnings, but judging by the proportions there's probably a fair bit of Audi Q7 underneath it.  Which would make sense, because the concept's powered by Bentley's 6.0L W12.  Here it's tuned for 600 horsepower, and linked to the new 8-speed automatic transmission that normally does duty in the Continental GT V8 (and Audi S8, etc.)  For now, the W12 in the Continental still uses the old 6-speed automatic, but it's been rumored that the 8-speed would be added to the 12-cylinder soon: here's your evidence.

So, what do you think of the EXP 9 F?  Terribly ugly?  Stupid marketing exercise?  Pointless?  Delightfully absurd?  Voice your thoughts in the comments section, below the gallery.