Bentley Motors Limited is a British luxury automaker, founded by Horace Millner Bentley 18 January 1919. Bentley is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the German Volksvagen AG. Bentley started the brand in Crecklewood (near London) and was acquired by Rolls-Royce in 1931.
(Picture: Bentley Continental GT V8 2014)
Bentley Motors Limited is the direct successor of Rolls-Royce Motors, which Volksvagen AG purchased in 1998. The rights to use the Rolls-Royce name and logo is still owned by Rolls-Royce Holdings plc, which is later licensed to BMW AG. They paid £40m for the license.
Volkswagen AG`s principal activity is the design, engineering, manufacturing and distribution of luxury automobiles sold under the Bentley marque, and the Bentley cars are largely hand-built in Zwickay, Germany.
As you probably know, Europe is in trouble and many of the economical reports doesn`t look good, but despite that, Bentley is not effected, and expect a new record year in 2014. Bentley`s biggest market is USA and the second biggest is China. despite the recession in Japan, Bentley is not effected by that either. So, Bentley has a stable market.
The luxury segment is good no matter what happens in the stock market or the economy at all. Rich people will always have money, so they will still buy luxury products like Bentley. Cheaper oil price will probably help the middle class and boost the car sale in that segment, but the luxury segment will still go strong. Rich people do not care about the oil and gas price. But in 1929 during the Wall Street Crash, Bentley saw the demand for its expensive products declining by the Great depression.
Porche have had a massive hit with their big SUV, and Bentely is out with a brand new SUV next year, and the price is $200,000. The test version of the brand new SUV is already on the road, and Bentley know that 95% of their customer already have a SUV in their garage, so they expect to enlarge their customer group.
The new SUV can boost Bentley`s sales by 50% to 70%, so the effect will be enormous for the firm. They produced 10,000 cars last year and expect to sell about 6000 to 7000 examples of their new SUV annually once the production is fully ramped up.
The new SUV sits on the same platform underpinning the third-generation Porche Cayenne, as well as Audi Q7 and Volksvagen Touareg. Lamborghini will spin the production version of is Urus SUV concept off the same architecture.
Bentley`s former boss Wolfgang Durheimer pushed hard for the development of diesel models, so it looks likely that there will be a compression-ignition version, but a plug-in-hybrid will follow shortly afterward as the first part of Bentley`s stated ambition to configure 90% of its cars as plug-ins by the end of the decade. What a competition on the SUV market next year.
Tesla will release their new SUV next year. In competition with Audi Q7, Lamborghini Urus, Porche Cayenne Turbo S, Land Rover Range Rover V-8 Supercharger and Rolls-Royce future SUV. But what is important to the customers? gasoline driven cars, hybrid or battery?
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