Bentley. A brand so emphatically associated with handcrafted wood and leather that the image and connection is almost as deeply ingrained as one of its walnut dashboards. But the company gave TG an insight into a future direction more allied with its upcoming millennial client base, and the results are more surprising than you might expect. Bentley, but not as we know it.
Why? Well, design boss Stefan Sielaff and his team presented a vision that sees traditionalist, old-school Bentley embracing technology and materials as yet unavailable in the industry, and incorporating them into future Bentley product. An amalgam of the new and the old. Technological traditional.
Sielaff’s presentation showcased an ambition to deliver a broader product range and the news was good: a smaller, sportier flying B in the shape of the performance-biased Speed 6 at one end, and a larger more luxurious saloon at the other. And while those excited about the prospect of the Speed 6 joining the line up will have to wait until 2018/19, the good news is that we also clocked a brief glimpse of next year’s all-new Continental GT. Think of it as a more practical mating of the current GT and some of the stronger design elements of the Speed 6 concept – like its ‘whisky glass’ lighting and more complex surfacing – and you won’t be too wide of the mark.
But this delve into Bentley’s future plans was aimed somewhere in the far distance, and the challenges it will face as a company keeping up with ever-evolving tech. And while the idea of scrambling a strangely menacing-looking holographic car butler from the comfort of your self-driving Bentley ‘lounge’ may be all a bit trite for most, there’s method in the future gazing.
Mainly because the concept of ‘New luxury’ will be defined by the tech partnerships and materials science tie-ups that Bentley is involved in right now. While the company’s hard-won reputation for handcrafted luxury will continue to appeal, for the brand to survive and remain relevant it has to turn the heads of a broader, younger audience. ‘Millennials’ and ‘Generation Z’ were both frequently referenced. 
But it’s not quite as pretentious as it sounds. Attitudes and times are changing, and fashion brings buying power – it’s hard for a vegan to square the ownership of this particular slice of automotive luxury on many levels, not least when you take into account the fact that it takes 18 cow hides to trim a Mulsanne interior. So it comes as no surprise that the interiors team – led by the most excellently-named Romulus Rost – are looking at developing partnerships with textile companies who specialise in silk fabrics, and vastly more cow-friendly Protein Leather. Which contains no actual cow.