New Bentley Torcal: have they gone TOO far?

This is the new Bentley Tour Car. It has the wildest grill of any car. And look at this. It lights up even when you're driving. If I take the key and then press the unlock button and hold it down, I can open all the doors automatically. Just like that. And then when I jump in and hit the brake. Only mine closes. The other should close, apparently. It won't happen now. Actually, it turns out if I press and hold this button here, then they'll all shut. And now we're good to go. If I press this button, I can open the boot. And if I press this button, I can open the fruit. There's 90 litres of space in here. It's even lined with leather. Some of the sounds in the car are made from actual noises they recorded, and the indicator is apparently this. A leather hammer tapping against a piece of leather. Is it? Kind of. When you turn the car on, you get this noise. That sound is a recording of someone rubbing the top of an expensive glass like this. I don't think I'm doing it right. Sounds like the windscreen wipers need replacing. And then when you put the car into sport mode, you get this noise, the thrumming sound of a V8 engine. And it's not a V8 engine. They recorded a drummer in an orchestra drumming away. And when you accelerate, that drumming will increase and get louder. It's quite clever. As well as recording noises, they've also filmed stuff. So for the animation on the digital driver's display, it's not just computer generated. They filmed the way glass refracts light as it moves. And then you end up with this. You can see the effect there. Look, unfortunately, I can't show you it moving because we're not driving. What I can show you, though, is this. Here we have a strip of crystal effect plastic with lights in it, and it creates this indirect lighting effect which is constantly moving. You can see the effect here and here. And then there's the Bentley puddle lighting, which flickers and glistens as you move it. Can you see? See the different animation? Yeah, that's cool. There's one charge port here and another one here. And you open it by just giving a little touch. Oh, it shuts in its own time. I'm getting bored. You stay here, Lewis. One eternity later. There you go. The sunroof has a special blind. So if I press this button up here, I bring up this menu down there and then I can slide the sunroof. Look, if I just press my finger on there like that, move it backwards and forwards. If you look at the roof, you'll see what's happening. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. I don't know why that's fun, but it is. But also, look, you have these are the patterns, frosted diamond and clear diamonds. If I press those, go from that pattern to that pattern. Bentley has also introduced some new materials. This is automotive grade merino wool. You even get it on the headlining. Obviously, all those features are pretty cool, but they're not what's going to sell the car. What's going to make it or break it is the design. So let me know in the comments what you think of the look of the new Torcal. In fact, you want to see my initial reaction when I was shown it by Bentley's head of design, Robin Page. There we go. So I'm anticipating baby Bentayga. Well, let's have a look. Off. That's that's a lot lower and sportier than I was thinking. You've got for the bling on the grill. Is this even allowed? Now, Robin gave me some insights into the design, but I can't regurgitate what he said because it was designer speak. But I'm going to give you what's in speak. So back end looks really cool. Love the light design and the way it's like protrudes there. You've got this cut out and it looks like that's going to be an air vent, but it's not. This particular car has carbon fiber on it, and it really works on this lower part. I think it looks great. It's quite smooth and sculptured here, whereas it gets angular as you walk around the side of the car. It's got some very muscular haunches, hasn't it? Wheel sizes. These are big. They're looking like twenty twos or maybe even twenty threes. So look, what are they? Twenty twos. And you've got the Bentley logo that always stays the right way up, which I think is a must on a luxury car. As you move down the side, you'll notice we've got proper door handles. Bentleys will not have any silly like poppy out door handles. They're going to maintain traditional door handles. I think it's a good thing because they're just easy to operate, even though the car opens its doors itself. And the roof line is quite sloping. It's about that much lower than a Bentayga, and it makes the car just look more sporty. Also, it's slightly shorter, not by much, but the wheelbase is slightly longer. And that, once again, contributes to the sporty design. Then you've got these cutouts in the door. This shape is sculpting this strong shoulder as well. And this part here is so very Bentley, don't you think? Look at that. That is very Bentley. And I absolutely love the shape of the bonnet. Now, if the lights come on, you'll see there's these two lines here. And the shape of all of this is a bit like an old Continental T. Here you've got some big air vents there, which help cool the battery system. Probably use that as well when you're charging at high speed. And obviously the grill, which needs no introduction. I'm not so sure about this bit here. This is like the camera in the grill. But they sort of have to have that there. The rest of the sensors are down here. It's not so bad. What's really interesting, though, is how this whole grill system is possible. There's some kind of like regulation where as long as the next light source is within 75 millimeters, you can continue it. And that's how they've been able to do this whole illuminated grill. And interestingly, there's 76 of these like diamond shaped lights in there. And they're inserted by hand. And if you notice, they're bigger in the middle and they get slowly smaller as you go to the outside of the grill. You might be thinking that this is going to be optional. It's not standard on every single tour car. It's definitely a showpiece, isn't it? But what about the color of this car? Would you go for this or something more subtle like that silver? Not going to lie, it doesn't quite have the initial wow factor. But for a car to live with, this is probably a little bit more me. I like the chrome bright work rather than the black trim. Definitely works around this part of the window. What I wouldn't have probably is blacked out rear windows. Can you have these just like see through? Yes. I'm not a big fan of blacked out rear windows, but silver does work. It's a bit more elegant, isn't it? And there's a definite reason why I prefer this car over the other one. And it's all about the inside. I'm a big fan of a light interior. And this just works. This greeny with the aluminum and the light leather and obviously the wall interior is special. Now, this car blends like old school Bentley design with modern tech. So you've got this digital driver's display and it's overlaid over the aluminum here. So it sits slightly proud, which is quite interesting. And it's very smooth, really high definition, got loads of different information. And you can cycle through all the different views using these knurled metal switches here on the steering wheel. Basically, anything that looks like metal is metal apart from these bits around here. So it's like a spread on anodized metal on top of plastic. And this up here. But switches here, that's metal. It all feels very lovely. Now, another thing they've done, which is quite unusual, is rather than the bullseye air vents, which you move around, they basically cut a hole through the trim and then the air vents are controlled through the screen. So to bring it up, you hit that button there and then you can just move the air vents around like this, turn them off. Fairly honest, I find that's a bit more of a faff than just moving a thing like that with your hands. But visually, it looks good. And visually, this screen is pretty cool as well. So they've gone for a curved screen. It's a little bit like in the Porsche, but that has a definite kind of step in it. This is smoothly curved. And the idea is it just follows the arc of your arm. So to operate, it's actually quite easy and very natural. And you can rest your hand on here and do it, or you can rest your thumb on there and do it. And that was part of the design process. They figured that out. That kind of works with the natural ergonomics of your body. Now, this screen, if it was like full length and just straight, it'd end up down here, which would make the lower part of it completely unusable. But this is a solution that they've come up with. Obviously, this is a prototype screen, so I can't show you everything operating, but we do have sat-nav and stuff like that. As you can see, the definition is great. This is the drive mode selector, and it feels lovely. And you push it in, and it just feels so expensive. Now, some of the weighting of these switches just isn't quite there yet, and they're still working on them. But most of this is as we will end up on customer cars. Other things you need to know, you've got physical switches there for the fan and the temperature, which are your main ones, and your auto, your windscreen, and stuff like that. So you do have the most important physical controls right where you need them. One thing that is a bit different is this. Rather than having a big Bentley gear selector, it's now on this pod, a little bit like Audi has introduced. So this is your drive select there, forward, backwards, neutral, and park. And then you have your indicators over here. You have your windscreen wipers on here like that. And it works better than storks. Let's talk about storage. So underneath here, you have wireless charging for your mobile phone with the mag lock. You've got your USB C's under here, and you have 60 watt and 100 watt. Underneath here, you have another area where you can store your mobile phone because this armrest slides forwards and backwards. It doesn't go up or down. Another thing to point out is the door. So they didn't go for a normal grab handle like that. They've just got a handle like that. But it does work. Oh, obviously metal door handle, and it's shaped like a flying bee. Behind it, there's knurling. So you feel the Bentley luxury whenever you open the door. But yeah, look, the position of the door handle, absolutely fine. The door bins aren't that big, though. Everything's obviously completely lined with leather. You've got lovely cheese grater name audio speakers. It's like 1800 watts of power in here. You've got full Dolby surround sound. It's nuts. Glovebox, loaded with felt. And obviously, this one exterior has got a lovely wool finish. Seats are comfy. We've got speakers in the headrest. This is a classic Bentley thing. The old double sun visor. What else do you need to know? Oh, yeah, look, everything's damped. So you've got old school Bentley luxury with modern technology and new modern materials. But don't worry if you're the kind of person that doesn't want carbon fibre like in that car, or aluminium in this car. You can still get this Bentley with wood. This is Bentley's wood store where they keep all the wood for their production process. And you have over half a million pounds worth of wood in here. Now, the most common wood they use is walnut, and they take the root ball from a walnut tree and they soak it and then slice it very thinly to produce the veneer. Obviously, you can get different types of wood from different trees. And if you go for a Mulliner spec, you can get this Californian redwood. So this tree would have been over 2000 years old. If that's not old enough for you, then how about this? The Riverwood is taken from a tree from a British swamp, which will have been over 5000 years old. Now, for the Torcal, they're doing something slightly different. It's called ombre fade, and they take veneers of different colour of walnut tree, and then they lay them on top of each other to produce a big block. And then they take a slice across it to produce this effect. Now, the production process of the wood veneers has actually changed over the years. So it's become more streamlined and quicker. So on a Mulsanne, what they used to do is take big blocks of wood to create this substrate, which you then put the veneer on top of. Then for the Flying Spur and the GT, they start off with this aluminium substrate. Then they build up a laminate and then put the veneer on top like that. For the Torcal, they're doing it slightly different. So they start off with a veneer, they put a special coating on the back, and then they injection mould onto the back of it like that to produce the part, which you then fit it into the car. So this is obviously quicker to make, and it's also a hell of a lot lighter as well. However, for the end process, they still have to go through the hand polishing to get the veneer looking shiny. And they still have certain details that they used all the way back in the Mulsanne, like this little effect here. Can you see it? You see this? The way they build that bit up. And I wonder just how easy that is to create. I'm now going to see if I'm any good at veneering, good enough to work at Bentley. This is Simon. He's going to show me what to do. Where does it go on the car, this? We cut a channel into the rail. Yeah. And then we apply this into it. So that would go like in there. Ah, got it. And then we secondary bond that to that. I think I f***ed it up, Simon. Oh no, I'll let you do these. I've never seen this before. It's wood in the door card. £10,000 and you get it in front and rear. OK, not bad. Now, if you don't want wood in your Bentley, you can go for more modern materials such as this piano grey, which is cool. You can even get a stone finish if you go through the mudliner program. Lovely. Now, here in the back seats, there's plenty of room. One of the problems you have with electric cars is that often the battery's underneath the floor, so your feet feel a little bit too high. But not here. Loads of under thigh support, extremely comfortable. Knee room is good. Headroom's good. And you can recline the seat back, like you can in the Bentayga, and you can slide the seats forward. If you need a bit more boot room, we'll check out the boot in a bit. But first, let's look at the practicality here. So you've got cup holders there. I wish they were covered. There's an indentation there for your mobile phone, but you will need to take it out of its case to fit in there. And then there's some storage here, which is lined with rubber so that things don't rattle. And I should show you this. Where is it? Where's the button? No, the button's there. You have through loading, of course. So it's 40, 20, 40 split rear seats. Central seat. I'm surprised there's a bit of a lump in the floor there, which is a bit odd because there's no transmission tunnel. One thing that is in keeping with an electric vehicle, though, is this. High wattage charging, once again, 60, 160. And you've got your full climate control here in the back, including ventilated as well as heated seats. And of course, if you pay extra, you can get a massage function. And there's these lovely, lovely cushions. And of course, being a Bentley, if you want to just block out the outside world, you can put up a blind. Speaking of which, this is a nod to the organ stops of the old car. This little coat hanger. Wherever you look in this car, actually, the finish is exquisite. How do they get the leather so lovely? Let's find out. The Bentley Tour car will use between six and eight bull hides. And before any of the leather gets put on a car, it has to be inspected first. I'm going to do that now. So they're looking out for things like warts, insect bites, blemishes and scars. So I'm looking for some scars and I'm going to mark them up with a pink pen because then they won't actually be installed on the car. So they're visible. They'll be hidden or just cut out and removed. I found them. There. Is that right? Yeah. I got it? Yeah. You got it. After the hide has been inspected by a human, then it's put on this machine, which then scans it using infrared. And it picks up other blemishes because there's certain blemishes that the machine will see that a human won't. And there's certain blemishes a human can see that the machine won't. On the tour car, there's 696 metres of thread use. So that's as much as going up one side of the alpha tower and down again. And stitching is done by machine, by a machine operated by a human, but also by a human with their own hands, such as on the headrest here. See that stitching there. And if you pay extra, you can go for the fancier cross stitching. The reason there's so much thread use in the car is because there's stitching and embroidery throughout it. Even here in the boot, look, stitching here. There's leather here as well. The boot capacity is 460 litres. It doesn't look like the biggest boot, does it? It's definitely smaller than the Porsche Cayenne EVs. That's the boot capacity of one of those. Another issue I've noticed is this. Look, the load cover is this slab. Where do you put this? Well, there is a sort of solution. It doesn't go into the false floor. There's just not room for it. Look, if you have a look here, you'll see no room for it. There's some storage with cables. The idea is that you put this down here like this, upside down, apparently. That goes in there like that. Right, snug. And then you put this mat on top. I put the mat in the wrong way. You put this mat on top just perfectly like that. Well, it feels thick carpet. Expensiveness. Now, you'll also notice this load lip is quite high, but obviously this car has air suspension, adaptable air suspension. You can raise and lower it there by using those buttons. There's also... You think I'm going to... I'm not going to do it, Lewis. I want to show you this. There's also these other buttons here to fold the seats down. I'm actually going to show this. Actually, Lewis, would you like to see the air suspension lower? I'd love to. Here you go then. I bet that made your day, didn't it, Lewis? It did. Thank you very much. I've got something else that will make his day. I'm going to show him where they're going to build the new Torcal because it is of historic significance to us Brits. This is where the Torcal will be built. It's actually the old factory where Rolls-Royce used to build the Merlin engines for the Spitfire. I got too close to this machine here, which you put the bodies on, move them along to the different stations. You can actually see a car down there just beyond the people that's being worked on. That's still a prototype because they haven't started making customer cars yet. This is one of the Torcal prototypes in camouflage, which has been heavily featured on various car websites. Look, Auto Express and Evo. There it is. Yeah, you can't really tell what it looks like, can you? At full production, Bentley will produce 36 Torcals per day. During the process, there will only be two robots making it. Everything else is hand-assembled. The main structure of the car actually comes from Porsche's KM factory in Leipzig. Then it's painted at Bentley. Then everything else is fitted to it by hand, apart from the propulsion system. So the battery and the motors, which is done by a robot. In fact, the batteries and the motors also come from Porsche. And that brings me on to the car stats. And we need a little bit of help for that. This is Martin from Bentley. He's the chap responsible for this car. So I'm going to give you some quickfire questions. Okay. On facts on the car. Okay. First of all, how much power? 888, comfortably the fastest or most powerful Bentley in our history. How much torque? 1350 Newton meters. 0-60? 2.9 with launch control. Top speed? 260 kph, 162 miles per hour. Battery capacity? 113 kilowatts total energy, 108 usable energy. Range? 600 kilometers. Charging speed? 10 to 80 percent in 16 minutes with a 400 kilowatt charger. And the architecture, how many volts? 800 volt system. Length? Height? 5 meters. About 120 mil shorter than an existing Bentayga in our range. 2 meters wide, 1.7 high. Again, lower than a Bentayga in our range. Price? Starting around 170 in the UK. With options, what would most people like to spend? Depends how adventurous you get, Matt. But I would say north of 200, I'd expect. Thank you very much, Martin. That was very insightful. All the best. I've got one more. How heavy is it? 2.795. That's 2.8 tons. That's pretty heavy. Do you know what? That means that the Bentley Tour Car is not only the most powerful Bentley, but it's also the heaviest. It's even heavier than the long wheelbase Bentley Mulsanne, such as this one here, which is actually owned by Queen Elizabeth II. I do wonder what the late queen would have thought of this first ever electric Bentley. Would it be a bit of her? Maybe King Charles will like it? Maybe Prince William? I'd say it's a little bit more Prince Harry, isn't it? But if you think the grill on the Tour Car is controversial, what about the grill on this particular car? Watch my video to see what I mean. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the video on the Tour Car. If you did, give it a like. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to this channel because we've got some more content coming soon, including a review of this car and I finally get to drive it. And as ever, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.