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As it prepares to launch its first EV, Bentley faces the same problem as numerous other brands with charismatic internal-combustion engines. Near-silent operation might be appropriate for a luxury car like the Bentley Torcal, but customers are going to miss the NASCAR-after-finishing-school sound of the V8 engines that live under the hoods of other Bentleys. So the automaker came up with something it hopes is the same, yet different.
From the Rolls-Royce 6.7-liter V8 that served from the 1930s until 2020, to today’s VW Group engines, the V8 looms large in Bentley lore and thus served as the inspiration for the Torcal’s signature sound. But Bentley didn’t resort to simply playing fake engine noises, or remixing them with more high-tech sounds, as some other automakers have done with generally poor results. Obviously artificial background noise is no replacement for the real sound of air working its way through an engine.
Torcal | The sound of Bentley, crafted for emotion
That’s why I’m encouraged by Bentley’s decision to not even bother trying to replicate the sound of its combustion engines. Instead, the Torcal will play sounds recorded by real musicians, “using real instruments including drums, viola, and bass guitar,” according to a press release. The soundtrack “responds to the driver’s inputs, heightening the engagement,” Bentley claims.
Drums in particular will cause drivers to feel the same emotions that make V8s so memorable, because they come the closest to the rhythm of a rumbling eight-cylinder engine, Bentley argues. To test that, engineers had people walk between parabolic speakers playing V8 and drum sounds to compare them. What you see here isn’t a still from a dystopian student sci-fi film, but a sonic experiment.
Bentley
We’ll see how successful that experiment was when the Torcal debuts. An unveiling is scheduled for September 23, and CEO Mike Rocco told The Drive in April that sales are expected to start in the third quarter of 2027. The recently revealed name of Bentley’s first EV comes from El Torcal de Antequera, an area of Andalusia, Spain, known for unusual limestone rock formations.
Bentley announced the then-unnamed Torcal in November 2024, describing it at the time as a “luxury urban SUV” smaller than the Bentayga. Rocco told us that it will still cost Bentayga money, though, and like the bigger Bentley SUV, it will share a platform with other VW Group models. In this case, that’s expected to be the upgraded version of the Premium Platform Electric used by the Porsche Cayenne Electric.
Stephen has always been passionate about cars, and managed to turn that passion into a career as a freelance automotive journalist. When he’s not handling weekend coverage for The Drive, you can find him looking for a new book to read.
