Bentley is a brand that doesn't like to be pigeonholed. Luxurious transportation is its primary mission, of course, and pushing into electric motoring has also been an important brief for it in recent years — but Bentley's recently appointed CEO, Frank-Steffen Walliser, says that the storied English manufacturer is hungry for performance, too.
"The Continental GT has more bandwidth for us to explore," Walliser told British publication Evo in a recent interview. "We can go further to the edges with the GT, to both extremes – luxury and performance, especially with performance. There is more we can offer. I don’t mean to offer the same level of models as the [Porsche] 911, but certainly more variety to bring in more customers, not move them around from model to model."
Considering he's a decades-long veteran of Porsche, it's not exactly surprising that Walliser sees room for performance improvements in its flagship grand-touring model. The German-born executive helped launch the 918 Spyder hypercar and revamped the 911 and 718 model lines in 2019, meaning his business expertise is strongly tied to performance endeavors. And Bentley has a history of pushing the Conti into loftier performance tiers, with the first-generation car seeing the arrival of the Continental Supersports and the second bringing the Continental GT3-R.
Walliser also used the interview to ponder Bentley's return to motorsports. Despite strong racetrack successes in the brand's history, the carmaker has been missing from the starting grid since it terminated its GT3 program in 2020, and there won't be an end to that absence anytime soon. Ultimately, a resurgence into motorsport could only work if Bentley made "a long-term commitment" and had a business case that added "to the brand in terms of what you are doing today and where you are going tomorrow."
"At Porsche, motorsport was linked to everything we did, certainly the 911, but you have to be careful because you can do more damage to your business than good due to influences outside of your control," Walliser told Evo.
All this focus on speed doesn't mean that he has lost sight of the exclusivity many Bentley customers crave. Part of making ends meet are plans for more limited-run models like the Batur and Bacalar, Walliser said. When customers are paying $2.6 million for a Bentley, it takes the pressure off of producing a halo car, the executive explained, adding that the customer base for uncompromising mid-engined supercar range-toppers isn't as strong as you'd think.
With a revived Flying Spur now on the market, a successful Continental GT program, and a new electric vehicle on the way, Walliser claims that the financials of the company are doing better than he initially thought. Bentley remains small — in delivered units and number of employees alike — for a Volkswagen Group brand, but he says it shows off the balance between scale and profitability that an ultra-luxury brand can manage.
"It’s a British company, so it was performing much stronger than I and others outside thought," he said. "It’s not very British to show confidence. But Bentley is strong."
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