Bentley Torcal Revealed as Its Cheapest Model Yet, from £173,300

• Bentley has revealed the Torcal, its first fully electric car, with up to 888PS, a 2.8-second 0-60mph time and up to 375 miles of range.
• At £173,300, the Torcal becomes Bentley’s cheapest model, undercutting the Bentayga, Flying Spur and Continental GT.
• The car uses real musicians rather than speakers to create its engine-like soundtrack, and introduces fully active suspension and four self-opening doors, both firsts for the brand.

Bentley’s First EV Is Also Its Cheapest Car

Bentley has spent 107 years building cars powered by some of the largest engines in the industry, including a twin-turbo W12 that only left production in 2024. The Torcal breaks with all of that. It is Bentley’s first car with a fully electric powertrain, and in a decision that says as much about where the brand wants to go as any spec sheet, it is also the cheapest model Bentley sells, priced from £173,300 in the UK.

That figure undercuts every other Bentley on sale. The Bentayga SUV starts from around £181,365, the Flying Spur saloon from about £207,120, and the Continental GT coupe from roughly £239,320. Bentley has effectively built its most accessible car yet and made it the most technologically advanced thing to come out of its Crewe factory, a combination the brand is betting will bring in younger buyers without alienating existing customers used to petrol and hybrid power.

888PS, a 2.8-Second Sprint and 375 Miles of Range

The Torcal launches in two forms. The core car produces 821PS and 1,194Nm of torque, enough for a 0-60mph time of 3.3 seconds and a 155mph top speed. The more focused Torcal S goes further, with 888PS and 1,350Nm on tap when Launch Control is engaged, cutting the 0-60mph sprint to 2.8 seconds and raising the top speed to 162mph. Bentley says the 1,350Nm figure is the highest torque output of any Bentley it has ever built, combustion or electric.

Those numbers put the Torcal ahead of the closest thing Bentley has to a direct domestic rival on paper. The Rolls-Royce Spectre, Bentley’s British ultra-luxury EV competitor, costs £333,185 and produces 577hp with a 0-60mph time of 4.5 seconds and up to 285 miles of range. The Torcal S beats the Spectre on power, acceleration and range while costing roughly half as much, though Rolls-Royce buyers are paying for a different kind of car and a different badge on the bonnet.

Power comes from a pair of permanent magnet motors, one on each axle, both filled with oil for life rather than needing scheduled fluid changes. The front motor uses an open differential, while the rear gets a locking differential with a multi-plate clutch on each output shaft, a setup aimed at putting the power down cleanly rather than simply overwhelming the tyres. The 113kWh battery, built from 192 pouch cells running at 800V, carries a 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty and supports a range of up to 375 miles on the WLTP cycle. Charging from 10 to 80% takes under 20 minutes at speeds up to 400kW, which Bentley says is fast enough to add around 100 miles of range in seven minutes, roughly the time it takes to use a motorway service station toilet and grab a coffee.

A New Chassis Designed to Feel Like Nothing Else at Bentley

The Torcal introduces fully active suspension to Bentley for the first time, paired with adaptive two-valve dampers that can raise or lower independently at each corner in real time, reacting to both the road surface and driver inputs. Bentley says the system removes the need for anti-roll bars altogether, using the dampers themselves to control body roll instead. All-wheel steering comes as standard, turning the rear wheels up to five degrees to shrink the turning circle to 11.1 metres on a car that measures five metres long, useful for threading UK car parks and narrow country lanes.

Braking uses 420mm front and 370mm rear iron discs as standard, with an optional carbon silicon carbide ceramic system pushing that to 440mm front and 410mm rear, which Bentley says are jointly the largest brake discs fitted to any Bentley. Buyers can specify black, red or grey calipers as standard, with three further colour options available through Bentley’s Mulliner personalisation division.

A set of 25 radars, sensors and cameras feeds the Torcal’s driver-assistance systems, which cover towing, garage and parallel parking, and can help avoid kerbing an expensive alloy wheel. If the car detects an obstacle on a narrow road, it can automatically reverse to a point it has already identified to let the obstacle pass, a feature more commonly associated with delivery robots than a two-tonne luxury SUV. Remote parking can also be operated through Bentley’s smartphone app, and repeated parking manoeuvres can be “trained” into the car’s memory for tight spaces used regularly, such as a home garage.

Real Musicians Instead of a Speaker

Most performance EVs pipe a synthesised engine note through the stereo to give drivers some auditory feedback. Bentley took a different route with the Torcal, recording live musicians playing drums, viola and bass guitar to create what it calls the Bentley Dynamic Symphony, a soundtrack built around the rhythm of the brand’s 6.75-litre V8 rather than an electronic copy of it. The system responds to torque demand and vehicle speed in real time, grows louder in Sport mode, and can be switched off entirely for drivers who prefer silence.

Bentley extended the same attention to detail across the car’s other sounds. The indicator click comes from a recording of a hammer striking leather in Bentley’s own upholstery workshop, and even the touchscreen’s confirmation tone was recorded from a crystal glass. Buyers can choose between a standard 620W, 16-speaker sound system or a 1,780W, 28-speaker setup developed with Naim that adds seat-mounted haptic shakers, headrest speakers and Dolby Atmos surround sound.

Doors That Open Themselves and a Cabin Built Around Four Moods

All four doors on the Torcal can open and close themselves using radar sensors, a first for Bentley. A passenger can trigger their door to close by putting on their seatbelt, or the driver can close theirs by pressing the brake pedal, small touches aimed at making entry and exit feel effortless rather than gimmicky. Inside, the car offers four “Experience Modes” that adjust lighting, sound, climate and the information shown on the curved OLED displays: Bentley Mode blends comfort and driver focus, Comfort Mode strips distractions back for a calmer cabin, Sport sharpens the visual and audio feedback, and Refresh increases fresh-air circulation and brightens the lighting to wake occupants up on a long drive.

Facial recognition identifies the driver and loads their saved seat position, steering wheel setting and driver-assistance preferences automatically, and a phone can be configured to work as the car’s key. An augmented-reality head-up display projects turn-by-turn route directions directly into the driver’s line of sight, reducing the need to glance down at a separate screen.

The front seats come with 16-way adjustment, heating, ventilation, adjustable bolsters and a massage function as standard, and buyers can add Bentley’s Postural Adjust and Smart Seat Climate systems as options, which continuously alter the seat’s shape and temperature over a long drive. A dedicated Wellness Seat Specification extends the massage function down into the seat cushion, covering the legs along with the back and shoulders. For the first time in a Bentley, the rear seat can power-fold, opening up boot space when the third occupant seat isn’t needed. Boot capacity is 460 litres, with a further 90-litre storage area under the front bonnet where an engine would normally sit.

Materials Bentley Has Never Used Before

Bentley worked with Somerset weaving firm Fox Brothers, which has made fine wool fabrics for more than 200 years, to develop what it says is the world’s first 100% Merino wool automotive fabric, certified by the Responsible Wool Standard. A new veneer called Ombré Walnut by Mulliner is built from up to 1,000 layers of reclaimed walnut off-cuts and recycled paper, pressed together and sliced to under a millimetre thick, producing four shades running from deep black through to light smoke. Buyers can also choose from 15 shades of olive tan leather, including three new colours, matched to 15 Dinamica options and five colours of the new wool fabric.

Standard Torcal or the Sportier S

The core Torcal comes with a 21-inch wheel as standard, satin silver brightware and open pore crown-cut walnut trim. The Torcal S adds a ten-twin-spoke 22-inch wheel design, black exterior brightware and mirror caps, dark rear lamps, a rear diffuser, sports sills, front bumper strakes, red brake calipers and illuminated treadplates, alongside piano black veneer as standard rather than an option. Three further optional 22-inch wheel designs are available across the range, including one focused specifically on aerodynamic efficiency, a bigger factor on an EV than a petrol car: drag has a direct, measurable effect on range.

Built in Crewe, Aimed at a Different Kind of Buyer

Bentley designed, engineered and builds the Torcal in Crewe, supported by a network of UK suppliers, and the company describes the car as a significant investment in British manufacturing rather than an outsourced EV programme bolted onto an existing petrol platform. Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser, Bentley’s Chairman and CEO, called the Torcal “a Bentley first and foremost, created by hand by people who care, using the best available materials and technology to blend heritage with cutting-edge innovation,” adding that he considers it “one of the best Bentleys ever.”

Design Director Robin Page led the team responsible for the car’s exterior, describing a low, sleek SUV shape built around what Bentley calls four design “reads”: proportion, graphics, surface language and detail. The nose borrows lighting cues from the Continental T, while the rear uses clean, uncluttered graphics the design team calls the “prestigious shield,” a theme first explored on Bentley’s EXP 15 concept car. A diamond motif recurs throughout the cabin and bodywork, sometimes obvious and sometimes worked subtly into textures and surfaces.

Bentley arrives at its first EV later than several ultra-luxury rivals. Rolls-Royce launched the Spectre in 2023, and Mercedes-Maybach has sold an electric version of its EQS SUV for several years. Bentley’s parent company, Volkswagen Group, has had electric technology to draw on for years through the ID. range and Porsche’s Taycan, giving Bentley’s engineers a head start on battery and motor hardware even as the brand took its time bringing a finished EV to market. The Torcal’s spec sheet suggests that wait bought Bentley the chance to build a platform designed specifically for this car rather than adapting an existing one, and the pricing suggests the brand wants this car doing real volume rather than sitting at the top of the range as a low-volume flagship.

Whether £173,300 buyers see the Torcal as a genuine alternative to a Bentayga or a stepping stone toward one remains to be seen. What is clear is that Bentley has used its first EV to introduce nearly every piece of new chassis and comfort technology the brand has developed at once, rather than saving those advances for a flagship model further up the range. For a company that spent over a century selling the sound and feel of a big engine, building its newest, cheapest car around the absence of one is a genuine change of direction.