Bentley released a video about the new range, calling it “the launch of a new focus for Bentley Motors” and introduces it as the concept of “automotive wellness.” If you haven’t strained your eye muscles too badly from all the rolling, you may want to direct them forward again (if you need to use your fingers to do so, please wash them first, we understand wellness here, too) and you can watch this entire, almost bearable 14-minute video about what Bentley is doing:
Damn. That’s a hell of a lot of effort to say “our cars are full of things that cost a lot of money, and you can feel that when you’re inside one.” In case you didn’t watch the video because you’re sensitive to rich people nonsense, what’s happening here is that Bentley is describing a whole new trim level for its cars, called the “Azure Range” (sharing a name with Bentley’s 1995 convertible, it seems), and this range is all about these annoyingly indulgent ideas of “wellness” and luxury somehow re-defined to feel not so much decadent as somehow good for you, physically and spiritually. It feels a bit like, oh, marketing bullshit. I suppose it is more than that, really, but fundamentally all of this is just in service of making a comfortable car, only now the very concept of what Bentley considers acceptable comfort has been aggrandized to the point of absurdity, so much so that they have engaged the services of a scientist named Katherine Templar Lewis who is a pioneer in the quite new discipline of neuroesthetics, which is the science of how our brains appreciate art and other aesthetic concepts. I’m not qualified to shit upon or support this discipline, though I know that humans respond to all sorts of art in extremely varied and significant ways, and I know that cars are fundamentally irrational things and always have been, so all of this rhetorical gilding and explanation for just making a really opulent car shouldn’t surprise me. It still all feels pretty ridiculous, though. So, what exactly is Bentley doing in these cars to make them so full of wellness or whatever? Some of it is pretty basic: very adjustable front seats with heating and cooling and massage features, stuff that’s been around a while. There’s also a lot of refinement of NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) that Bentley quantifies like this: Bentleys have been extremely quiet, comfortable cars for a long time, so these improvements would have to be very granular, and by comparison a ride in any of my shitboxes would seem like being in a shipping container full of live fireworks to a Bentley driver. Also, for that study about traffic noise and depression, it seems to be the same one mentioned in this Daily Mail article, and a quote from the study is “This study provides new evidence of an association between high road traffic noise exposure and depressed mood.” I wonder if perhaps it could also be that people who live next to roads with a lot of traffic noise tend to be there because those areas are more affordable, and there could be socio-economic factors at play here as well? Factors that I’m guessing your average Bentley buyer doesn’t have to deal with.
Interior materials are, of course, a very big deal for luxury cars, but Bentley seems to be taking things to new, more bonkers levels (emphasis mine): Fucking hell. “Wellness quilting?” Jesus, Bentley, stop, just stop. I can’t with this bullshit. To that end, the Azure interior design specification includes ‘wellness quilting’; the fractal patterns of precisely crafted diamond quilted upholstery create an eye-pleasing interplay of light and shade and provide an irresistible invitation to explore them with one’s fingertips.”
I mean, sure that’s a lovely interior with a quilted pattern, but is that really “fractal patterns of precisely crafted diamond quilted upholstery,” or is it just quilted upholstery like the kind that’s been on cars for decades and decades? I mean, if you really need the fractal patterns of precisely crafted diamond quilting, Walmart can hook you up for $25:
Plus, these seat covers have Swarovski crystals, so, you know, beat that with your “wellness,” Bentley. A bit more on the hard-science side of things is the Bentley Dynamic ride, an anti-roll control system that uses the 48V electrical system developed by the VW Group. The basic system has been in use in Audis, and the operation of which can be seen in this animation, accompanied by appropriately soothing music:
It’s a system that can couple or decouple anti-roll bars as needed to provide for the smoothest possible ride, and can use electric actuators to provide over 900 foot-pounds of ant-roll torque to maintain the body at a level and flat attitude. It’s an impressive system and there’s no doubt it helps with comfort. There’s also no question that these Bentleys are incredibly nice and well-built and very likely arms-of-a-lover-grade comfortable. I believe all of that. But I also can’t help feeling that this incredibly overdone and self-serious approach to automotive comfort, replete with the sorts of buzzwords and vague concepts you’d hear outside of a yoga studio that you’d probably be asked to leave if you wandered in, all feel infantilizing and just, I don’t know, too damn much. It’s an expensive car. It’s all about too damn much, all of the time, and I get that. I’m sure there’s plenty of rich people who want precisely all of this shit, and I hope Bentley can take all of their money and everyone is happy. And, really, it’s kind of win-win, because if this is the direction Bentley is going, I don’t feel even the slightest particle of remorse that, outside of severe sewage-flood damage, I’ll never own one, never be cosseted in a cocoon of Wellness Quilting and active suspension and the most finger-pad-pleasing of porous woods. Happily, I’ll also never care. What Bentley has spent a lot of work promoting in their car is comfort. The car is more comfortable. It’s rather sad to think of all the other things that the intellectual firepower devoted to marketing and advertising could be used for, given the state of the world today and all of the problems that have manifest.
