First sight: Bentley Torcal

The fact that the Torcal is an electric vehicle is probably the least interesting thing about it. What sets it apart is how Bentley is choosing to evolve as a heritage luxury brand in an increasingly competitive market. A renewed focus on craftsmanship, emerging technologies and a distinctly British sense of luxury has resulted in what is, in this writer’s opinion, one of the marque’s most compelling design statements in recent years.

According to Bentley product line director Martin Page, the SUV is also intended to appeal to a new generation of customers, bringing younger and more style-conscious buyers into the brand.

Finished in Electrum, a new satin-finish light green developed for Bentley – although other colours are available – the Torcal showcases many of the themes that will shape the company’s future models. Among them is the updated winged emblem, which appears on the bonnet and tailgate and is projected onto the ground as occupants approach the vehicle.

Visually, it feels different from the Bentayga – slightly smaller, with a more prominent grille and muscular rear – creating a welcome degree of separation between Bentley’s SUV offerings.

The official launch took place at a high-profile event on the Strand, which we attended, but Car Design News also received a special preview with the design team at Bentley’s impressive new studio on its Crewe campus.

The launch was a who’s who of automotive journalists and influencers. The Torcal was, of course, the star of the show. Measuring five metres in length – compared with 5.12 metres for the Bentayga – it stays true to Bentley tradition with a short front overhang and slightly longer rear overhang. To exaggerate the front portion of the vehicle, an ‘endless’ body line, available in satin or black, flows from front to rear.

Naturally for a Bentley, the grille dominates the upright front face. But why retain a grille when the SUV is electric? Bentley design director Robin Page sees it as a celebration rather than a practical design element.

“We wanted to do an illuminated grille to celebrate this iconic element of our heritage,” he explains. “We took some influence from the Continental T’s grille, with the horizontal lines and the wrapping line that comes underneath. The Continental T also had four big round headlights, and we’ve taken those vertical elements and put them on the Torcal’s front face.”

The lighting signature comprises illuminated diamonds in three different sizes, referencing the matrix pattern found on historic Bentley panels.

“The diamonds are designed to capture the light and sparkle,” Page continues. “We’ve also clustered them together to create a horizontal line. From a distance, it reads as a modern graphic, but as you get closer you begin to see the three-dimensional form of the diamonds.”

This theme continues through the welcome sequence: as the customer approaches the car, the diamond pattern is projected onto the ground.

The electric powertrain enables a substantial wheelbase, making the cabin particularly spacious. Its Bentley wing-inspired architecture swoops symmetrically across the dashboard, while lighting beneath the instrument panel and within the door panels shifts almost imperceptibly to create what the design team calls a ‘cocooning halo’.

For Darren Day, Bentley’s head of interior UX and innovation, the symmetry is fundamental to the atmosphere of the cabin. The intention, he says, was to create “balance and calm”, with the central graphic line extending through the interior and into the digital instrument graphics to maintain that sense of equilibrium.

The integrated display is particularly interesting. It is curved – somewhat like the screen in the Porsche Cayenne Electric, although Bentley naturally believes its execution is better – to maintain a constant pressure point beneath the user’s finger when scrolling.

“When you have a vertical surface, your touch points change and you start to select things in different places,” Page explains. “This gives you a really nice experience of scrolling through the list because it’s a soft curve.”

Day describes the integration of the screen as ‘magical fusion’. “We’re not an iPad company,” he says. “We don’t put iPads onto dashboards; we only do integration. You’re going from pixels and glass to metal, wood and leather, all in one little area.”

The physical architecture has also been designed around how occupants actually use the display. A ledge supports the thumb when operating the touchscreen, while the stationary outer section of the central controller acts as a hand rest. These are small interventions, but they help to make the technology feel like part of the interior rather than something placed on top of it.

The graphics within the HMI also reference the diamond theme. “We worked with Cumbria Crystal in the north of England, which handcrafted whisky glass-like forms,” Page explains. “We put them into a darkroom, shone light through the crystal and captured the reaction. The graphics in the Torcal use videos of that process.”

Physical and digital elements are nicely balanced, with an array of metal switches positioned in front of the screen. Page says this balance was a direct result of customer feedback.

“This mix of switches and the digital display – and the two working together – is really important to our customers. We didn’t want to dominate the interior with big screens everywhere.”

The absence of a passenger display almost seems unusual in today’s screen-saturated market, but Bentley has taken it as an opportunity to showcase its materials instead. The panel ahead of the passenger can be personalised in a variety of colours and finishes.

Materiality is central to the Torcal’s interior, with three new treatments introduced. The first is a 100% merino wool developed with Fox Brothers in Somerset. The company is known for producing extremely tightly woven cloth – so tight, in fact, that thorns cannot penetrate some of its traditional hunting fabrics. Bentley and Fox Brothers worked together to create an automotive-grade merino that is soft to the touch but sufficiently robust to withstand abrasion, staining, sunlight and the other demands of vehicle use.

Andrea Jensen head of Bentley’s CMF team says the decision to work with Fox Brothers grew out of an insistence on using a pure material. “We knew a lot of other OEMs had tried, but we said that if we were going to do it, we wanted 100% wool. We didn’t want a blend with polyester. It had to be pure or nothing.”

The intention was not to replace leather, but to use wool alongside it to create a softer and more inviting environment. “We wanted something that feels nice and cosy,” Jensen says. “Merino wool is a luxurious material.”

Achieving the required specification involved extensive experimentation between the two companies. Jensen jokes that the team went through “50 shades of grey” as it tested different samples, thicknesses and constructions. The finished material is almost as thick as leather, allowing Bentley to offer equivalent components in either finish without changing their underlying geometry.

Rather than placing the wool on the highest-wear areas of the seats, Bentley has concentrated it on door inserts, lower panels, the roof and other highly visible or tactile surfaces. The wool also contributes to the acoustic character of the cabin. As Jensen notes, interiors containing warm materials such as wood, wool and leather tend to absorb sound differently from spaces dominated by harder, colder finishes.

The second new material is an engineered veneer. Multiple veneers are sliced into strips approximately 1mm thick, pressed together and cut again to create a distinctive linear pattern and ombré effect. The technique enables Bentley to use more of the available timber, including offcuts that might otherwise be discarded.

Its graduated colouring has a practical as well as decorative purpose. Day points out that the veneer becomes darker as it reaches the corner of the panel, allowing the shadow to disguise the shut line. It is the kind of detail that may initially go unnoticed but demonstrates the level of consideration running through the cabin.

Lastly, Bentley has developed a sunburst aluminium finish with a three-way brushed pattern, inspired by the disciplined lines of architecture. The result is technical yet tactile, providing a deliberate contrast with the softness of the wool and warmth of the veneer.

Jensen says the aluminium took almost five years to develop. The team produced hundreds of charts to assess how different line depths and thicknesses altered the overall graphic. “We wanted the lines to be thin but still have a nice haptic quality,” she explains.

Instead of attempting to disguise the electric whir normally associated with EVs, Bentley has approached sound in a more imaginative way, recreating the character of its 6.75-litre V8 through music.

“We chose to work with professional musicians to duplicate the sound of a V8,” Martin Page explains. “We captured its tones, rhythm and balance using instruments. When you’re in the car, the sound is different at the front and rear, just as it would be with a V8. We’re getting to a point where people are enjoying this far more than an engine imitation. It’s emotional.”

The approach extends to the Torcal’s secondary sounds. Its indicator incorporates the noise of leather being tapped with a hammer, while the digital assistant is accompanied by the sound of a crystal glass being struck and a finger tracing its rim.

This smorgasbord of clever materiality and unmistakable style is certainly impressive, but what do you think? Let us know through our social channels below.