Gold Rush: Bentley Bentayga driven in California

I’m looking for three golden tennis balls or five golden eggs. I’m not picky. Why? Because gold is currently trading at £785 per troy ounce, and I need 204 troy ounces (6.3kg) to be able to purchase the £160,200 Bentley Bentayga. Taking into account its density of 19.3g/cm³ that’s equivalent to the volume of three tennis balls, or a large omelette. And that’s before options. If I want the rotating Breitling Tourbillon dash clock, I’ll need to find the same again.

Meet Jim. Jim has dedicated his life to pursuing this aureate metal, knows more about nuggets than Usain Bolt and owns American Prospector Treasure Seeker, the largest gold-mining equipment store in Southern California. The most gold Jim and his wife Sue have ever prised from the earth in a single day is 11g, and they know what they’re doing. Under Jim’s tutelage I’ve given myself two days in and around Palm Springs to smash his personal record several thousand times over, armed only with a goldish coloured Bentayga and some good old British optimism.

Photography: Mark Fagelson

This feature was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

I’m placing my trust in Jim for two reasons. Firstly, because the first self-made millionaire in the 1848 Californian gold rush was Samuel Brannan – a man of rare vision. When Brannan heard that a sawmill operator, James Marshall, had found fat chunks of gold lying in the shallows of the American River near Coloma, 500 miles north of us, he didn’t dash there to fill his pockets. Instead he bought every shovel, pick and pan he could find and set up shop in preparation for the 190,000 49ers that were about to descend on the Golden State over the next year. OK, so he’s 160-odd years late, but Jim knows the money’s in selling to the many deluded prospectors, not dropping everything and joining them. Secondly, he has a killer ’tache.

Our photographer Mark and I arrive at the store in Temecula, an hour south-west of Palm Springs, and Jim and Sue come bouncing out to inspect Bentley’s golden goose. Sue jumps straight into the driver’s seat and starts stroking the leather, while Jim puts his hands on his hips and keeps it brief: “How much did you say it was?” I do a quick conversion in my head and tell him roughly $230,000, with around 600bhp. “Hoo-wee! Now, you boys want to see some nuggets?”

Jim grabs a bag left casually on the passenger seat of his pickup and pulls out a gel-filled tube containing a $1,000 lump the size of my thumb. I’m transfixed; it’s a thing of beauty. I’m tempted to snatch it and get my stockpile off to a flying start, but realise that would be short-sighted. Determined to do this the old 49er way, I go inside the store and grab a $30 plastic panning kit, a shovel and narrowly avoid the temptation to buy something called a nugget sucker.

We discuss our plan for the next couple of days, and Jim’s main concern isn’t my lack of relevant skills or knowledge, but that the Bentley won’t be able to handle the terrain. Frankly, so am I, but I reassure him that it’s tougher than it looks and turn his attention to today. For today, we are plundering California’s rivers, and Jim has the perfect spot in mind: Cajon creek.

The hour-long drive, mainly on pencil-straight freeways, would be irrelevant in most cars – miles to be quashed and forgotten – but in the Bentayga, it’s important stuff. To meet its brief as the world’s most exclusive, most luxurious and most powerful SUV, it’s these sort of journeys that it must fashion into an event. But it’s not the imperious refinement or the plush, heavy-set ride that’s making it memorable, it’s the fact that I’m not having to do much driving myself.

Set the adaptive cruise control to your desired top speed, select your distance to the car in front and activate the lane keep assist system, and the Bentayga will steer, accelerate and brake for you, so long as there are defined lane markings either side. Problem is, every 10 seconds it beeps at you insisting you place a hand on the wheel. Not that Bentley would ever admit this is remotely a good idea (and neither would we), but if you, say, accidentally wedged the ashtray in the wheel, you could probably jailbreak this system. Let’s just say that I’m pretty much superfluous to requirements for 40 autonomous miles.

At the creek, we locate the perfect spot where fast-flowing water suddenly slows. “That’s where you find that gold,” says Jim, so I roll up my trousers and leap in expecting pebble-sized lumps to appear between my toes. Turns out it’s scarcer than I thought, and panning a damn-sight harder, requiring extreme patience and a deft touch. The key is shaking the heavier black sand and gold to the bottom, washing away the unwanted material, then swirling water over the black stuff to reveal the treasure. After 10 panfuls and a seized lower back, we’ve got diddly-squat. Brannan’s customers must have dredged this creek dry.

Crestfallen, we load up the car and point the Bentayga’s grille towards our base in Palm Springs. By the time we hit the Palm to Pines highway, our spirits are up, convinced that tomorrow will bring limitless bounty to compensate for today’s drought. You see, that’s the thing about gold, it’s a seductive mistress. Because it’s everywhere in these parts: in the water, in the rocks, in the mountains and underground – you’re always in with a shout. Know that feeling when you buy a lottery ticket for the first time in 18 months, and by the time you get home it’s unthinkable that you won’t win the jackpot? Yup, same thing here.

And if blind positivity weren’t enough to send our mood soaring, this squiggle of Highway 74 we’re on is a dazzling strip of road. Endless wide, well-sighted and beautifully cambered turns, with panoramic views of the Coachella Valley below, give us our first chance to drag this 2.2-tonne SUV out of its comfort zone.

To say something corners like it’s on rails is the biggest cliche in the motoring journalist’s handbook (right up there with ‘stump-pulling torque’), but with the Bentayga, it’s a useful approximation. Turn the eight-mode driving dial (four-on-road, four-off-road settings) to Sport, and the new Bentley Dynamic Ride ups its game, pre-emptively tensing the dampers you’re about to lean on to keep the body eerily flat and the outside wheel square on the road. Bentley says the 48V electric active roll control system is three times faster than a hydraulic set-up. All we know is it works and makes the Bentayga’s perceived weight much lower, so unless your passengers have a glass of bubbly on the go, you can throw it around with confidence.

The 600bhp W12 engine – all-new down to the nuts and bolts – is excessive, sure, but feels custom-built for the Bentayga’s disproportionate requirements. Whereas the previous-gen W12, fitted to the Continental, takes a while to pick up and is a bit of an anchor at low revs, the new twin-scroll turbos fizz with infinitely more energy and respond with only the briefest of pauses – like a pair of well-trained butlers. If ever there were a car where you might look a peeved law enforcement officer in the eye and honestly claim not to know what speed you were travelling at, the Bentayga is it.

We meet Jim at a Jack in the Box at 9am, and he’s brought a friend. Fred is just as nuts about prospecting, and the two of them own an 80-acre claim together out in the desert. Clearly, if there’s gold on their patch, Jim and Fred don’t want us to know, because that’s not where we’re heading. Today we’re exploring the Dale mining district, just south of 29 Palms. A mass of sandy tracks and rocky inclines linking a maze of abandoned mines, it’s a history lesson and our best chance of finding treasure rolled into one, plus a chance to see where the Bentayga’s off-road limits lie. 

Over sand, rocks, dips and sharp inclines, it’s utterly unruffled. A wading depth of 500mm and ground clearance of 245mm (in the air suspension’s highest of four settings) won’t trouble a Range Rover, but it’ll sail over anything short of a ruddy great boulder. And on rippled sandy roads littered with sporadic piles of rocks, it’s bumpy but not unpleasant. For scientific comparison. I jump into Jim’s Tacoma pickup and it’s like being thrown headfirst into a washing machine.

You can spot the mines from the tailpiles – huge mounds of rocks and dust spewed out by the old miners blasting their way into the mountainside. The unprocessed piles can be loaded with gold, Jim informs me, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack and we haven’t got the time. The pinkish piles are the same stuff but processed with cyanide to extract the booty. “They say the cyanide’s gone now,” Jim says pointing at one of the pink stacks, “but I don’t want to be the one to prove them wrong.”

We scale a grey pile and find a hobbit-sized mine at the top. As I dip to take a look in, Jim places a weathered hand on my shoulder. “Couple of things you want to look out for here. Firstly that it’s a tunnel not a shaft, and then there’s the critters. Rattlesnakes like to hang out by the door, but you might find bobcats, mountain lions, bats and owls in there too.” Good point Jim, you go first.

Inside we find a white vein of quartz that runs the length of the mine. Shine the torches up close and flecks of gold wink back at you, but it’s too dangerous for us to go hacking at the walls in here. I’m so close, but yet so far. I know it’s there, I can see it, but without a stick of dynamite there’s not a whole lot we can do.

We push on, the terrain morphing from soft sand to gnarly rocky paths. It’s a delicate procedure this, progress is painfully slow and we’re constantly scanning the road ahead for tyre-slashing outcrops. But the Bentayga ploughs on, slow and steady, leaving its toff image behind and rolling up its sleeves. The strangest thing about the whole experience is that while the tyres and suspension are being put through hell, I’m sat comfortably in my quilted leather throne, enjoying a light massage and listening to country music through the crisp 18-speaker, 1,800W stereo.

When things eventually level out, I turn to Jim with wild eyes and insist he takes me to the gold. Jim ponders for a moment, then: “How about a place where a guy I know found an 18lb nugget just sitting right there in the ground, staring him in the face?” Frankly, I’m at a loss as to why he didn’t just take me there in the first place, but I smile and nod frantically.

We pull up in what looks like a man-made, cobbled car park – a phenomenon called desert pavement. It’s a plateau of perfectly flat, compressed rocks where a small hill or mountain used to be, and a hotbed for gold buried just below the surface. Jim sets me up with a detector, and I’m off, waving it around like a lunatic, desperately trying to cover a meaningful patch of ground. After an hour, I’ve got nothing but a sore shoulder – not a squeak. I decide to change tactics and search as near to Jim as possible, perhaps he knows something I don’t.

And then I hear it, a definite spike in frequency. I pinpoint it to a patch no bigger than a playing card. “This is it,” I think to myself and allow my imagination to wander. I picture a nugget the size of my head and all the fame, adulation and jealousy from Jim that it’s sure to bring. I start shovelling dirt like a demented mole, and narrow it down to a tiny pile. OK, it’s smaller than I hoped, but gold is gold, right? Well, yes, except when it’s a fragment of an old bullet.

At this point, I know my prospecting career is over, so we gather up our shattered dreams, a single tear running down my dusty cheek, and ship out. I comfort myself with the knowledge that it hasn’t been an entirely wasted day. The Bentayga has been an unstoppable force – soaking up the punishment like a steel toecap boot, disguised as satin slipper. And as we hit the soft, sandy track that leads back to tarmac and civilisation, I have a pinch-myself moment: here I am in the middle of this endless landscape, in a car of such peerless quality – life rarely gets better. And then I hit a rock and explode the front right tyre.

In my defence, it was very well hidden – Jim didn’t even see it when he flashed past. Whatever the cause, the damage is done, and we need help. So we do what any desert-stranded motorist would and call Bentley, who dispatches a support truck immediately that arrives an hour and a half later to replace the mangled 21-inch wheel and tyre. I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a real-world solution, but then that’s the thing about the Bentayga – there’s not a lot of real world about it.

Thumbing through Bentley’s customer magazine on the flight to Los Angeles, I noticed an advert for a special-edition high-end range cooker, now available clad in carbon-fibre panels. An utterly unnecessary level of opulence, but a great opportunity for the very well heeled to shift more of their mountains of cash. The Bentayga is of the same ilk – a fine piece of craftsmanship and a monument to engineering, but essentially an opportunity for über-rich SUV lovers to spend more than a top-spec Range Rover will allow.

It’s not a game-changer this car, it’s a money maker, and because it’s something new and currently the finest of its kind, it would have sold regardless of how it drove. Hats off to Bentley, then, for doing such a thoroughly magnificent job, because working hard at something doesn’t always yield the reward it deserves.