Bentley Bentayga review - Reliability & safety

While sharing steering-wheel controls with a lesser (if still excellent) car may seem a trifle unbecoming for a Bentley, using similar systems and mechanicals to the Audi Q7 and Porsche Panamera does bring about some reassurances where safety and reliability are concerned.

Bentley Bentayga reliability

Bentley sells too few cars to have featured in our 2023 Driver Power customer satisfaction survey. The only fair yardstick with which to judge the Bentayga’s reliability is the Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne, with which it shares some mechanical underpinnings. The Q7 is also fairly new, though, so making a fair assessment is impossible at this stage. What we can say is that the Bentayga certainly feels built to last, but that it's also very complex and parts are likely to be very expensive to replace once the car is out of its warranty period.

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Safety

The Bentayga sells in numbers too few to warrant Euro NCAP crash-testing, although the five-star result achieved by the Audi Q7 provides plenty of reassurance. The Bentayga is also available with the latest safety systems – although many of them are optional. Clever ‘predictive’ cruise control uses sat-nav data to ‘read’ the road ahead, adjusting your speed for changing limits, as well as corners and hills. Rear cross-traffic alert should make reversing safer, while the 360-degree bird’s-eye camera and self-parking systems are likely to be useful, given that the Bentayga is almost five metres long and isn't a car you want to scrape the paint off.

As standard, the Bentayga is fitted with exit warnings to warn occupants of approaching traffic, along with matrix LED headlights and blind-spot monitoring. It also features Hill Descent, which can take control of the car if you drive down a steep, slippery slope, automatically using individual brakes to adjust its speed.