Experienced by Kimatni D. Rawlins
A Name Carved from Stone
There’s a place in southern Spain where the earth spent a hundred million years underwater, then millions more being thrust skyward and carved into shapes no architect would dare draw freehand. Dubbed El Torcal de Antequera, the poetic formation sits in the hills above Malaga, a limestone karst region of towering stacks, twisting corridors, and rock formations weathered into shapes that look more like sculpture than geology.
The new Bentley Torcal borrows that name for the company’s first electric SUV. Positioned in a segment Bentley has yet to occupy, the Torcal is shorter and squats lower than the Bentayga while offering similar interior packaging, a sports SUV built to widen the company’s audience while avoiding the dilution of Bentley’s DNA. The stated aim out of Crewe is clear: build an impressive Bentley first, set a fresh benchmark for what the brand calls extraordinary journeys, and make sure it’s recognizable from every vantage point.
During my time in Monterey, CA, I rode in the passenger seat of the Torcal with Bentley’s Martin Page. It has not been publicly shown, so Bentley kept an artistic wrap on the vehicle. Under that shorter, lower body sits real engineering restraint. The EV will be offered across combustion, plug-in hybrid, and full electric power units, all built to feel consistent with one another rather than three separate utilities wearing the same badge. That consistency mattered enough that Bentley spent extensive development tuning the electric version’s sound. Expect the Torcal to go head-to-head with the Rolls-Royce Spectre, currently the most salacious and luxurious EV on the market.
Output tops 850 PS, making the Torcal the most powerful Bentley built to date, with torque north of 1,000 Nm. Range is targeted around 373 miles with 400 kW charging capable of adding roughly 100 miles in seven minutes, or a 10-80 percent charge in under 20 minutes. Weight lands around 5,952 pounds, substantial but not surprising for an EV SUV built to carry this much presence and battery componentry.
Inside, the Torcal resists the current industry habit of solving every problem with a touchscreen. There’s no passenger display, a deliberate choice, and the cabin instead relies on physical switches for actions like cabin temperature and volume, blended with digital elements rather than replaced by them. Thank you Bentley! The signature touch is the bullseye vent, a heritage graphic pulled straight from Bentley’s design archive, now playing double duty as housing for the Torcal’s air-vectoring system.
Bentley benchmarked everything from near-silent competitors to fully synthesized soundtracks before settling on its own solution: engineers built the engine and exhaust note around the character of the 1980s Continental R, one of the longest-serving V8s in Bentley’s history, then linked that sound to torque demand rather than road speed or throttle position. The result is a vehicle that communicates succinctly what is transpiring during acceleration, which Bentley considers essential to what it calls Confidence Inspiring Character: the idea that a driver should always sense the physics at work, not just the dial climbing on the speedometer. Yet, this palpable logic is easier said than done.
That same philosophy runs through the chassis. The Torcal shares underpinnings with the electric Porsche Cayenne platform (a sister brand under The VW Group), but Bentley modified the hardware down to the most minute details. Steering feel received the same attention, tuned for the on-center stability Bentley treats as a brand signature where the automobile holds its line rather than asking the driver to correct it. Bentley describes the intended driving sensation as comfortable as a Flying Spur and just as dynamic as a Continental GT, a bandwidth wide enough to shift character across the Torcal’s drive modes.
Pricing will land below the Bentayga, positioned between Bentayga’s current entry point and the top end of the premium SUV segment, a deliberate gap meant to pull in buyers new to the brand. The Torcal surname still portrays most of the work. A landscape sculpted over an unimaginable span of time by forces with no interest in rushing, and what’s left behind looks less like erosion and more like ancient art.
Expect the public unveiling on September 21, 2026.
