How Bentley Builds Fast & Luxury Cars For The Ultra Rich | CEO Frank Walliser | FO551 Raj Shamani

0:00What makes a car fast? You need engine power. Your tires are important. The gearbox is important. If a car is difficult to drive, your driver, if he feels unsafe, it will not go to the limit. If you know the car is exactly doing what I want and it gives you a very good feedback and a lot of confidence, then you will be quicker. Dr. Frank-Stefan Walliser, CEO of Bentley Motors and the engineer behind some of the world's most incredible performance cars. If you love cars, engineering, luxury, or just want to know what really goes into building a Bentley, this episode is for you. What will be something in a Bentley without the logo, which will be difficult to replicate for a competitor?

0:44I think the interior quality we offer, it's unmatched. There's no car in the world that shows this level of detailing. In a car, paint is an extremely complex process. So you cannot just take every color. You have to test it. You have to make a climate test. You made a stone chip test. You make a cutting test. You look out for corrosion and so on. There's a lot of technology behind it. A lot of car manufacturers, they use pencil sketch to make cars' first vision or concept. What is about pencil sketching that we needed that any AI can do? Because AI, it will use a lot of images of existing cars and then generate, yes, something new, but where's the creativity?

1:22So you cannot replace the imagination and the skill of people that fully compute you, your brand and the creativity and everything. How many times have a car crashed before it reaches us? It's more than 40, I would say. We have different crash configurations and cars. What Bentley gets right, which other luxury cars have never gotten right? What do you understand about mindset of ultra-rich people? We stay true to our brand. We don't try to be someone else. We try to be Bentley only. Don't try to copy. Don't try to follow trends. Be your own character. You just announced a global brand ambassador, Priyanka Chovra Jonas.

2:02Why? Why specifically her? Um, I think... The sound of a door. That tells you whether the car is cheap or expensive. Who would be your competitor?

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2:43You know, I was reading about making a car. and what I was fascinated that even today a lot of people a lot of car manufacturers the first thought that they have they use pencil sketch to make the car car's first vision or concept in the world of AI and supercomputers and all of that what is about pencil sketching that we needed that an AI can't do because AI uses the existing a lot of the existing knowledge and if you ask ai to draw to draw a car it will use a lot of images of existing cars and then generate yes something new but is it where's the creativity and again it comes to the brand understand the brand and understand your heritage and and being creative and second is it's it's very quick and um surely sometimes also discuss with designers say look i made a nice ai sketch and then the designer looks at it and said yeah but it's wrong here here here um so you cannot replace the imagination and and the skill of people that fully compute you your brand and the creativity and everything you can use it in very very or in in many other processes and topics in design oh i would be careful just because of imagination i think it's imagination it's it's also skill set on on designers because i think the biggest difference between a manager and a designer a designer has to come with skills and with talent and either you have it or you don't have it yes you can train and you can learn but you have to bring a talent to the table and then after the design the first thing which is made once it's approved by all of you the first thing is not a 3d model first thing is not anything it's made out of clay the clay model is a 3d clay model why why what's about clay that every car is made as a clay model first it's quick um you you can modify and you can just modify the clay very very quick without For sure, you generate data, and then you mill it, and then you look at your clay model, and you need a 3D model.

5:06I went through so many projects having seen it, 2D, ideation, sketches, Photoshop, very first data, volume models. and then you see the 3D model and then you as human beings we can really only judge the form and everything if we see it 3D and honestly you need also a little bit of sunlight to see highlights and form language and the quality of the surfaces and it can only be done through clay it was like built 100 years ago right? since then it's just clay models still now i follow for for 30 years or even a little bit more than 30 years the discussion we shouldn't have clay models but they are still there they are quick they help you in the visualization and visualization is extremely important everything is for sure is with the surfaces and everything is in computers but at the end of the day you have a real object it would be always good to have the real object also to judge it and to release it because in the moment you're release it you kickstart 200 million euros in tools so you should be better safe yes and then clay is a better option clay is a relatively cheap cheap option and a quick option and the designers are working in the surfaces and if you have a good modeler they have this feeling on how it looks has to look like and how the radius has to go in the surface and how to make a sharp line or not so sharp line this is sometimes handcrafted and if you see what is generated in in computer surfaces versus what is sometimes hand modeled it's astonishingly what the craftsman can do and you need talented modelers and after that because you're talking about the thin lines and craftsmanship, right?

7:13There's usually always a thing that in car, the invisible enemy is air. Because just like few millimeters here and there, it can just completely change the wind tunnel and the speed of car, right? Explain if somebody doesn't know what wind tunnel is. Well, cars are a very complex product and they're moving. so they're using energy and aerodynamics is very important for a car so besides for sure the design you have also aerodynamic requirements on surfaces and this is mainly drag and downforce so the rolling resistance of a car has to be as low as possible and the wind drag has a big impact on it.

7:59If you're a little bit more sporty you're also looking for downforce or to reduce lift this is the more common piece to really get downforce you need wings and and more aerodynamic things what you normally only see on a race car but to reduce lift for stable stable driving and if you're it starts on speeds of 50 60 70 and kilometers per hour where you already start feeling the impact of aerodynamics and then goes up but if you then having a car that is 180 miles per hour so close to 300 or over 300 it has to be super stable from an aerodynamic perspective and for sure to get to 300 you need a lot of power the better you drag the lower your rolling resistance the quicker is your car and you're right you have some millimeters or some edges or some air streams that don't properly flow over the car and you you create turbulences then your drag goes up your car slows down and this is this is done in parallel interestingly ai has sometimes very good proposals how it could look like to be more efficient is we do then constantly in the background and aerodynamic gives constantly feedback to design what they would expect because you have also a target frame set on your drag numbers and on your downforce or lift numbers you need for the car.

9:37So what makes a car fast? Sometimes cars can have same engine or same horsepower sort of engine, same power of engine and then still some cars can be faster than others. For Bose you need engine power because this defines ultimately what you have in your pocket and then you optimize for top speed mainly rolling resistance what is drag but it's also tires um the gearbox is important on all the power goes through the gearbox it has to be cooled it has resistance in um so this is a this is a very important part of it uh your tires are important and uh also that the rolling resistance of the tires have an impact for sure on the top speed and with that comes then the tire pressure so then you drill down uh then it comes down to the weight of your wheels and how quick you can accelerate i would say the top speed is the easy category category it gets way more advanced if you're talking on lap time because lap time is then power weight weight distribution um tires tires tires um the grip level the downforce level the drivability of the car the feedback of the car then it gets way more sophisticated and elaborated to have a a fast car in terms of top speed i would say manageable as long as it's stable to have a fast car around it around the track for a lap record completely different league way way more complicated way more things to be considered so you broke a record right when you were in Porsche and you built one of the fastest cars and you broke a lap record.

11:25So what changes did you make which helped you break that record and the top speed was maintained throughout? To that time, no car had been around the Nürburgring, a very, very demanding, very long track in Germany, more than 20 kilometers. No fully homologated car had been ever quicker than seven minutes it was 7 12 7 5 but no car was quicker than seven minutes when we started the project would say because it was a hybrid and was for the very first time a hybrid sports car and hybrids when we started the project a hybrid was honestly a reliable japanese product that was pretty boring to drive from a to b that was a hybrid it was not sporty it was nothing it was just related to fuel efficiency and and everything but no emotions at all i said okay if you bring the hybrid technology now to a sports car it has to be emotional and we have to prove that it's quick so let's target a lap time around the nürburgring and the car should be faster than its predecessor.

12:38And that was a 732. Back in the days with the Carrera GT, I would say the potential of the car was maybe a little bit higher. Not everything was squeezed out. So maybe it was seven, eight, eight seconds, even faster. So we said, okay, we should be quicker than this car. And then we developed this hybrid technology and then we have seen all the potential of it, of four-wheel drive, of lowering the center of gravity, and we worked on every parameter aerodynamics weight distribution center of gravity tire performance drivability overall performance and so on then you run the simulations and then you see oh it could be way quicker the car but we did not really set the target to be quicker than seven minutes but we went then there in september 2013 and everyone in the team knew maybe it's possible and the drivers knew because you need also very brave drivers very experienced drivers around the Nürburgring that understand to have a car there safe on one hand side because you want your car you want your driver back and quick on the other side and Mark Lieb did it then back in the days and you can imagine there's a lot of tension on it because we had also only a very small window where the racetrack was available and it was a wednesday morning i think on a wednesday morning we we had a free slot it was perfect temperature it was cold in the morning but it was dry so perfect conditions on the track and we could do the lap below uh seven minutes and there was a you can imagine it's for a team working nearly three years very hard to get everything done it was a big relief and a lot of joy and fun and everyone was incredibly proud what has been achieved and at the end of the day we have proven a hybrid can be quick it can be very quick and also emotional and it has it has was proven that it's suitable for a sports car and that was the whole story behind it and we have seen as there was the Holy Trinity others also tried it but they could not give evidence that they've been quicker than 7 minutes despite some videos that are around you should not run out of tape if you go around the Nürburgring.

15:22And this was 918? It was a 918, yes. 918, and if you had to point out to one factor out of thousands of factors which were maybe contributing to the speed of the car, what made it the fastest? I think the magic is it's not one factor. It's not the single thing what you can optimize. A car works then perfectly if all components, if everything is in kind of a in perfection i would not say harmony does not really underline what this is about bring everything to perfection it will be only quick if everything works nicely together the engine the tires the gearbox the shifting program you have to optimize everything you cannot if you are operating at the total limit and this was back in the days the total limit and you cannot say i don't care too much on i don't know rolling resistance of the tires or the grip level or the feeling of the car you find a lot of cars that are quick but they are very difficult to drive if my theory is always if a car is difficult to drive your driver will not squeeze out everything because if he feels unsafe or she feels unsafe they will not go to limit if you know the car is exactly doing what i want steering braking tail braking all the all the things you do as a race driver and it gives you a very feedback a good feedback and a lot of confidence then you will be quicker what i'm guessing you're saying that the confidence that this car is safe and it's doing what i want to do the control actually is the differentiating factor because I'm sure all the other companies must have tried to put all the pieces together and their cars are perfectly fine but those one or two seconds that comes from confidence?

17:22It's definitely confidence but it's also preparation. We put a lot of effort in the day to be just ready to go to the track unpack your car test it and then drive it and you see a lot of companies arriving at a racetrack and then they start to build their car to change parts and everything because they have not been prepared go to the racetrack and be ready and then unpack it fresh set of tires off you go this is how it should work it should not be oh we have to change this and we have to change this and we have a new software here and we have something here this is not not what is expected if if you're looking for perfection it's the product it's the process it's the people everything has to be perfect everything and then you can really do it and you know i spent some time of my life in in racing it's the same if you arrive at the racetrack and if you start to change parts on the car and everything your preparation was not good you have to be prepared to go to the track put the car on wheels go out and then you should be you know where you are and you should be good interesting you know another fascinating thing because you were in Porsche and now you're Bentley right there's every car okay has a skeleton and then there are few cars which are completely different but have a same skeleton right which which is in the case of Bentley and Porsche Can you explain how Bentley and Porsche, at least one specific car, they are just different cousins under the skin?

19:03There's a lot of discussion amongst other fans and car enthusiasts about sharing parts and platforms. In these days, and I think that makes a big difference and not a lot of people are aware, the software in the car defines sometimes way more than just the hardware because with today's software and the adaptability we have that is built in these platforms that you can really show a range between and the Porsche and the Bentley is definitely bookends a lot is driven by software, by calibration for sure you make some tiny adjustments in your suspension and your setup in roll bars and dampers and damper settings.

19:55But this is not the big changes. If you look at the past they look pretty much the same. So it's tiny adjustment and I think within Bentley and this is honestly a tradition in the company now for 80 years is to make this refinement there's given platforms there's uh for sure in the Volkswagen group you find a lot of very very capable high-end technology and to properly make the decisions what fits a Bentley what do we leave out what does not fit a Bentley um like a passenger display we made a conscious decision and say a passenger display does not fit to Bentley why we have wonderful veneer why a passenger display and the question is if you have a luxury product do you really need more screen time don't we think we look enough on screens and if I I've seen a lot of passengers for sure with a passenger display no one uses it why and then it's just black and it's not nice so these decisions you have to make and then for sure in drivetrains and engines there's a benefit of of taking this over because um the engineering capabilities and also in electronic platforms and and computers you're using you don't see if this comes from what car whatever is the car where it comes from you what you see as a as the owner or as a driver is everything on the surface you see content you see screen content for sure you have an instrument cluster and then the philosophy is that everything that you see is Bentley specific once the skeleton is done once the body is done right now the car needs the heart right now the car needs the engine right and tell me like the engineer in you and explain me this what happens the moment engine goes in and then I press the accelerator how does that that accelerator becomes like movement what is the combustion happening fuel like what's going on well it's combustion engine hybrids plug-in hybrids electric cars if I take the plug-in hybrid as it's electric car and the combustion engine car this is maybe the best example for it the accelerator in the past it was a cable to a throttle the throttle opened the air flow in you injected the fuel you had an ignition and that moved the piston it looked simple today for sure you don't have a cable anymore you have a computer in the background you have a the pedal is more or less a sensor so you give an angle you have wiring and then you transfer this information to an ECU that checks a lot of things about the gear and the clutch and if the car is moving or not and then it we say today it's not the accelerator it's a torque wish.

23:14So how much torque do you want to apply to the wheels? And this is then converted in either a combustion engine where still a throttle opens fuel is injected. But like when in the combustion engine when you put a throttle and then there's ignition happening right so that's like tiny explosion tiny explosions yes and then depending if you have an eight cylinder like in the bentley case so it's like hundreds of tiny explosions happening like constantly yes for how like for just forever forever it's how long the car runs and for sure it happens many times you open the wells the the crankshaft is is rotating and then you get the fuel in and everything is today for emission reasons we have the cleanest combustion engines ever built um you control exactly the amount of fuel you burn you know um how much air how much fuel you have the catalytic converters you look for the for the um particles so there's a lot of emission control behind that there's a lot of um around one third of the compute capacity just checks the conditions of the engine for emissions in an electric motor is a little bit different but again you ask for torque and then the power converter defines the amount of um uh of current that is supplied uh to the electric motor and then the electric motor converts it also to torque and you need the idea of of torque demand as you have four wheel drive and sometimes the four wheels are not connected if you have an independent front axle and the combustion engine in the back you need an understanding of how much torque to each wheel and then we make a difference between front and rear left and right this is the torque vectoring so a lot of computers are doing a lot of things in the background what you cannot imagine at the end of the day as a consumer as a driver you go in you go on the throttle and the car moves and if you steer it steers but then you said you explained combustion and electric right does it change my experience because electric cars are not fun to drive and now that you're moving completely to electric like what what happens when i buy a bentley which is electric i think and that's maybe part of the learning journey in the introduction of of electric cars and combustion cars and it i would also say it depends a little bit on the generation how did you grow up with combustion engines or more electric or hybrids what is your knowledge and what is your interest also in cars in general i would say the electric motor is way better suited to drive a car or to drive anything There's a good reason why all trains, drums, are driven by electric motors.

26:19Even a diesel engine is an electric motor and a generator. So this is very capable. The problem in the electric car is more the energy storage. What is very easy in the combustion engine, but the drivetrain is complicated. it um about the emotions and i think that's that's some of the findings it obviously cars are emotional and people asking for emotional experience it's not just moving from a to b it's a lot about emotions this is why we look in colors in form in leather in the interior in the smell of the car and everything and the sound of the car the sound of the car is also important because we as human beings emotions are coming with all our senses and if we are going to an open air concert it's the vibration the heat the sound the more of our senses are activated the more emotional we get if someone touches us feels completely different if we are only talking.

27:28This is human being. And we should not deny it that it also exists if we are driving a car. We are touching a steering wheel. It must be gentle and leather. And it tells you something. Already the diameter of the steering wheel tells you something. How do you feel in your seat? Is it comfortable? Is it sporty? Is it high? Is it low? Do you get back pain from it by driving for now? So emotions. and that drives your feeling on the car and for sure as Bentley we are selling emotions we are not selling cars you want to run from A to B exactly this is to be very honest there's no reason to spend that amount of money to drive from A to B but to get an emotional link it's very important that we speak to all the senses now it comes to the sound if you would just skip that in an electric car and say silence is very nice because engineers spent many many years to get the sound out of the car to have the perfect silent car now we have the perfect silent car and we are saying oh something is missing and if you go as humans if you go in a dead room so uh complete sonic isolation you feel does not feel naturally it feels a little bit something you have pressure on your ears so sound is very important now it's about what is electric cars now you have a big debate on is it artificial is it not artificial where does it come from we made a decision to say yeah actually it's very traditional in v8 but just to record a v8 and to bring it in the car it would be it would be it would felt wrong so we had another idea i cannot tell it at the moment it will come you don't have to wait too long within the next two and a half months we will reveal what what we have done on the sound but my experience again was because i was driving cars with and without sound with the sound you have the emotional connection to the car again and it even helps you i did some some winter testing ice driving with the car with and without sound with the sound you know better what your car is doing you know where you are on the throttle it helps you in in controlling the car you drive more naturally sure i'm i'm also trained for many many years on this maybe the next generation will will see it different but again to to us as humans our ears are working all the time even if we are sleeping we can hear because it's a warning system yeah and it's a very very quick connection in our brain because it just from our true nature if it's a warning signal we have to react immediately so technically spoken the ears are directly wired to the brain so we can react quicker and this makes it again more natural.

30:40If you then connect your drivetrain to a sound that fits the brand and the car and the movement your driving is just more natural. What was important for us is to offer something what is not just computer generated it's crafted. And I think that I can say music is also very important to our customers and music is part of emotions. And so it would be very natural to think about music and crafted music. So not coming from a computer, from an orchestra and then think what could fit to it. But more I cannot say. That's enough. That's a good sneak peek. I would say yes. When you design a car, do you think about, like you obviously think about experience, but do you think about how am I tapping on all five senses?

31:34Is that a question which is a constant conscious question while designing the experience of driving? I think it's totally embedded in our processes, but the electric car changed so many things. So you had to step back again and rethink how do we do it? even even the shake of the car and the swinging of the car is then all of a sudden different and it's hard to understand when is the car ready to go when is the engine fired up because there is no engine and it's definitely not fired up how do you give a feedback that you know car is running and this is small things we we struggle in in daily life and if you observe people driving cars especially if they switch the car from one brand to another they struggle or for a sudden they do not know it's on it's off and that that forced us to step back again and rethink how to use a car because a lot of things that have naturally been given have disappeared or are now different and give a very subtle, easy to understand, easy to digest, easy to process as a human being to bring that back in the car.

32:56This may be some of the learnings that will come now with the next generation of cars. Make them kind of natural. It's not about, and this is maybe very often misunderstood, it's not about there can only be combustion engine cars, electric cars will be will be not good it's not true it's not about we are always orientated to the past um this is this is not the thing and if you listen to modern phones on the sounds interestingly a lot you you hear music but you hear also a typical bell of a phone and you have this swelling moments because this is trained and it worked for many many years why should we skip something like that and now that the car has gone electric does it have more wires or less because like in every car there are probably more than 1500 wires which goes in does it have more wires now I think it's we have to split one is the development of the electronic architecture in general what is

34:12software defined vehicles and so on, they have an impact on the wiring and everything and then you have the electric drivetrain itself for sure you have the high voltage, high power cables they come in additionally but the rest of the architecture is more or less the same it's a little bit less because you have less temperature, you have easier or different cooling some aspects you put additionally in some are off but this does not really depend on if it's electric or combustion engine the general network is pretty much the same it doesn't make a big difference I had a question, I saw the factory today and I saw that under our seats that's where the fuel is storage fuel storage is right under the seats, isn't it dangerous?

35:03no I would say it's the safest place that you can find because it's between the axles like I'm sitting on a 50 liter of petrol if you're sitting in a plane you're sitting on tons of fuel the crash configuration is always to find where's the safest place of the car this is the passengers inside the axles you have the front you have your crash absorption zones outside the axles front and rear for the crash impact and then you have the side protection so the your cabin is the safest space this is why we put the people in there and this is why we put the fuel in there because it's the safest place that you can find in a car interesting and once the car is made to make it safe it goes through crumpled zone what is that how many times the car has crashed before it reaches us oh that depends a lot uh on on the countries and so on but um i would assume it's between real crash between um maybe it's more than 40 i would say 40 yeah you have different crash configurations and and cars is a lot 40 times you have to build rebuild yeah sometimes you crash front then you crash the rear depends a little bit on the speed if you crash with 56 kph there's no repair anymore and it's done they have offset configurations a lot of lot of different rollover tests and so on i was when i was in the factory where i saw that bentley makes about 10 000 cars in a year i never talk about the volume because it's not so important for us.

36:44We look fair to fulfill customer wishes. Fair, but there are 5 ,000 people. Why do we need so many people in today's world? What is it about human hands which a robot can't make? If you look at the stitching, the cross stitching of leather parts cannot be done by a but not today and will take a lot of time because it's not rigid material it's leather it's fluffy it's really difficult to handle for every machine to handle fluffy materials and and to stitch it and also if you consider you have to program and prepare everything but we're doing a lot of one-offs the color combination is only wanted by a single customer to program a robot and everything it would take way more time and also cost instead of having highly skilled workers our employees and and they do it and uh it's it's not all our building cars so we have around four and a half thousand on site um but maybe manufacturing of the cars is is 17 1700 1500 around so we have a lot of people in engineering some in procurement in marketing in after sales all the functions are on site and it's true the majority is not making cars or is not producing cars it's the smaller group is producing cars the bigger group thinks about what to engineer to design to sell to produce to procure to plan also you need a planning department behind all these workers that you have logistics behind it to get the parts in time to the line and so on so it's a complex operation but even polishing that could be handled like with a machine right why do we need manual polishing um you will see more polishing in a new paint shop done by machines on the on the original sending um the final polishing is again is that a robot can really do it in every detail a hand is is good feeling for that is something valuable but does does your customer people who are buying bentley do they care more about handcrafted or handmade things why like why does an end customer care about handmade things not a robot mate it gives you it gives you a more a better feeling the car is made for you it's very specific and we see for sure i had the chance to walk the the factory with some customers coming from everywhere in the world and then you walk through and you see all all our people working there and doing cross stitching and polishing the cars and do this assembly after going through the factory no one is asking why is the price of a bently where the price of bentleys no one asks they all see the handwork they see the passion and again we are talking emotions this gives a different understanding of how these cars are built on the care we take on where you can really see how the leather is built on the seats and people are looking for every little detail that makes the difference and that gives you a more personal connection and i would say it's in in every product that you own and you have an idea of how it was built it connects you different than if it's just something you buy off a shelf another thing which was i was blown away by actually three things and which were the most expensive three things so i want to point them out one by one right because you already pointed out it's one of one paint.

40:44What is the raw paint in a luxury car which makes it extremely expensive? I think paint is, in a car paint is an extremely complex process. If you look in majority of the cars in the world are white, the other part is black. But this is not the expression this is just very functional. White is easy to paint. Okay, and as there's a lot of hot countries white helps you a little bit in protecting temperature if you if you climb up the automotive ladder to more expensive cars sportier cars again it's about expression you're looking for something special and you want to show that and paint quality is a subject everyone can see on a car because if you look at it if you see the surface if you see how polished it is and you see the reflection of the sunlight i think this is just it's just an amazing experience and again our our senses the visual what we see is is just great but what what makes it expensive why is it so expensive there's a there's a development process behind it so you cannot just take every color you have to test it you have to you make a climate test you made a stone chip test you make a cutting test you look at for corrosion and so on this is there's a lot of technology behind it um and if you go down then to hand spray you have people with a with a with an application that bring and that needs a lot of experience to get it the homogeneous and no variation in the thickness because we have hard requirements that the thickness of of paint should not be have a variation over over the body and if you go then in things like our ombre paint where you have two different in fact it's five to six different tones over a body it is pure craftsmanship and if you talk to people who are doing this this is really art this is you have the talent or you don't have the talent if we would go now out there and try to to spray a car and paint a car it would look horrible and we have the same paint the same machine the same body everything the same but you need this feeling and it's if you're talking and craftsmanship that's it people that can apply that that have the experience they made it for years and interestingly you find people in our paint shop they're painting cars for 25 30 years and they have the joy every morning to come in and to say look at the research look what i can do and it's really unique it's it's i'm very fascinated by what our people can do there and then the second thing was the sound of a door that tells you whether the car is cheap or expensive how how do people engineer sound of a door that's that's really engineering that's a lot about seal rigidity it's a sound deadening it's it's stiffness of panels and everything that you can engineer but it needs a lot of passion it it's the it's the latch or everything we we have acoustic cameras that show you where something's swinging it's knowledge again engineering knowledge but it's attention to detail so what's the difference between a cheap sound and an expensive sound?

44:25I think that when you close the door, the sound is different. You don't hear secondary effects. You don't hear anything swinging. It gives you a deeper frequency what comes with higher weight. This is why if you close a carbon door, it sounds completely different than closing a steel door. Today we have aluminum doors.

44:50if the question is the secret source how should it sound it's difficult to define but I can tell you if I slam a door and say this is not how it should sound, this I can say but what is really good, it's difficult but then customers have a feeling for that and interestingly as part of buying a new car is opening the door and slamming it and they can make it out yeah even sounds good sounds solid i think for bentley it should sound solid but does bentley have a specific sound like this is how the door slamming should sound uh i don't think or maybe i should ask our engineers if they have a a reference door i'm sure we have reference door maybe they all are like they're so experienced they're like this is Bentley sound this is not can you make it out a Bentley sound the question if we could if we have separate cars and just would hear it and not see it if we could find the Bentley for me maybe hard for others I would say they can do it if they're more the experts but it's engineering that was a fascinating thing that's engineering but it's a lot attention to detail and sometimes you spend months on just the closing of door yeah yeah yeah for engineering yes and then there was wood yeah that's also fascinating yeah like they told me there was this small room like probably smaller than this and millions of dollars of wood which look like this like just a thin slice what's about wood again it's and bentley and you see it also in the leather we're talking that natural material and we are we are looking very often even we engineer a car and it's a it's a piece of art but we look very often in nature what does inspire us from nature in colors materials leather wool um color schemes you sometimes have if you look at your ambient light in cars it looks like pearl tower in shanghai everything is very bright is this what we want to look at or do we look for sunset for the light that comes through a forest or or if you're at the sea and you see the blue water are we looking for these natural themes we strongly believe yes we're looking for nature because it calms us down a little bit and wood is one of the is maybe the material mankind uses longest because it's it's easy to to work on and it's it's available and so on and wood in cars has a long long story it was a material available easy easy to use so it was used in cars um today for sure from a functional perspective you don't need it but we also look in decoration and and we look at a feeling that gives you a nice and and also luxurious feeling and what is still associated with a luxurious feeling if you have a table and this is the one here would say is not overly luxurious yeah it's functional it's very functional if it would have a wooden surface we would say oh look at this this is nice and same in the car in the decoration and this is why wood is very traditional in bentley we have a lot of knowledge there you have seen all the different materials but again it comes to the craftsmanship if you then know that the pattern left and right is the same it's mirrored you have a center line and then you find the patterns um on both sides of the car there's a lot of knowledge behind that and i had the chance to to do a little bit an internship or for a couple of hours to to work not really work but i was shown what to do and could try it myself and then you find oh it's not so easy to really get it perfectly matched you don't see if you if you stitch two pieces of wood together that the um all the fine lines still align and you you cannot spot where the joint is.

49:22Believe it or not, but every morning I take my fingers and I go over this wooden surface and it just gives you a very good feeling. And again, I come back to the senses, this is touching, you connect differently to a part because you go over the surface, you feel it and you can really see the craftsmanship. That's the story behind it and it pleases you every morning. See, we spoke about the art and passion, like craftsmanship. I want to speak to you logically. Do you think the end consumer, do they pay more or do they really care about you sourcing a wood, let's say, from Japan and then sending it to Valencia and then bringing it here and then matching this perfect thing and not using any other thing?

50:13like it's it's everything is natural so this story if you don't tell this story and you still put a word which is probably looks the same and because you can recreate the same look by probably cheaper means right could be maybe done yeah so if you just do that and you don't tell the story of where you're sourcing how you're doing it would it matter to a customer i think yes it's it's again it's the part of a luxury product is to understand where does the material come from and the storytelling is extremely important and it's not telling a story where there's no content it's telling the content and telling the story behind it and then you create the value and this gives a deeper understanding to the customer what we are doing but it also lifts your product in the value because you understand all the effort that is behind it and i would say it's it's if you have a silk scarf and you understand where it comes from and what it takes to get the silk and the weaving and the printing and everything and it it gives you a different link to your product but it also rectifies sometimes the price.

51:32You see, well, with the silk scarf, it's not just somewhere machined, it's people's handcrafted, it's thoughtful, it's sustainable. And you consider the price then different. So if, let's say if I remove Bentley badge from this car, what would it, what will be something in a bentley without the logo which will be difficult to replicate for a competitor i think the interior quality we offer is i would say it's unmatched there's there's no car in the world that shows this level of detailing second is and this is maybe not so know but it's the quality of the drive how the car handles and how the car finds the perfect balance between you can go really quick with a bentley but the level of comfort we offer by still having the capability of being being quick and being a really driver's car is also very unique and i think this you can feel that which would who would be a competitor if you have a sure i would say we have no competitor that is exactly offering the same you find and this maybe is also very specific to the bentley brand and very unique in the world the bentley brand is maybe the only brand in the world that can cover a very luxurious car with the eight liter or a flying spur today or bentaga ewb what is by the way the choice number one in india is the ewb so the extended wheelbase for the bentaga down to a continental super sports very sporty car very extreme both with the same brand you cannot imagine and if you look in the luxury segments you have names from car companies in the uk in italy but you cannot imagine the cars coming from italy being a luxurious limousine or sedan driven by the king hard hard to hard to imagine you can also not imagine that other cars doing other companies offering luxurious limousines that they do proper sports cars hard to imagine bentley can do bentley has the history Bentley has the biggest width of cars that can be offered just by our heritage and what we have delivered over the past.

54:10From very luxurious to very, very sporty. And I think we can even stretch it more, getting more luxurious and getting also way more sporty. It's all in. And it's not a stretch in the brand. It fits perfectly to the Bentley brand. And that's very unique in the world. but like usually when a customer buys their at least first car they're comparing an suv with another suv and they don't usually think about oh can i get like all three or no right they're comparing a sports car with another sports car right and there have been so many luxury car companies in last 80 years which have probably now disappeared yeah right or few have become a part of a larger group and like now selling it with someone else right independently i think bentley is one of the only ones and so what bentley gets right which other luxury cars have never gotten right what do you understand about mindset of ultra rich people i think we we stay true to our brand we don't try to be someone else we we try to be bentley only and again it comes to the to the pride you you mentioned um stay to the core of our brand um don't try to copy don't try to follow trends um be your own character and and don't step away from this i think it's very important to understand the heritage um our own heritage to learn this is honestly where i started the job i was driving the old cars to learn something about and and i've driven cars that fascinated me i've driven cars i did not like so much but and that you have to understand because there's a heritage and that you can build on that as a as a company it's very important that you understand what did you deliver in the past what can you be proud on what achievements have been there and if in every company have been achievements um sometimes successful in the market sometimes not maybe sometimes too modern too early too quick too late there's many reasons yeah but um there's always something you can be proud of because people worked on it people have fought on it people produced it um look at it learn it respect it this is very important do you then market the same story differently in different regions because one of your largest actually your largest market is america yeah and then there's europe right in europe who's buying bentley probably is family legacy person a kid who has been like who inherited the wealth and is now coming to your showroom and is buying right and in america most of the buyers would be these tech finance crypto billionaires multi-millionaires would come and buy Bentley.

57:12Do you market in both of these regions differently because buyer is completely different? No, not from a central perspective because I also would say we would dilute our brand. We have to stick to the core and be consistent everywhere in the world because you cannot separate the markets anymore. With social media, you cannot say this will only be shown in the US. This is in UK. This is in Spain. And this will happen in Austria. this does not happen anymore or in india this is it no no way the world is global and it's immediately global once we are posting something or using social media channels it will be everywhere in seconds so it's not possible um it it depends sometimes a little bit from the retailers on what approach they have um but what we see we even if we sometimes consider the stereotypes of what we would expect is a bentley customer we are always wrong um there is no stereotypes as as broad as the bentley brand is as broad as our customers we find people yes they have inherited but we find a lot of people that have built up their businesses successful successful successful in business, very, very interesting people.

58:35And I have the chance from time to time for sure to talk to our customer. And you always have a talk on what is your business, what you're working in. And it's really interesting. It's a lot, a lot of people. But when you talk to an American new tech multimillionaire, who's first generation founder, and when you talk to a European family legacy inherited wealth person, do they talk about different things? Like the mindset is different? Honestly, they have a different source of their wealth and their income. It could also be vice versa, by the way. Fair. They have a different source, but what unites them, it's car enthusiasts.

59:23They're passionate about cars. they're ready to spend the amount of money that is needed for Bentley. This unites them. And they know sometimes our customers know way more details than I know. It's always a challenge. How do you market? Where do you spend most marketing money? What marketing medium? Because traditional advertising is shit for you guys. It probably doesn't even work. Yeah, I would even say it comes back. even print advertising because print stays so the media goes and we do we reshuffling a little bit of money also back to print advertising because again it gives you a lot of value it just feels different interesting if you have a page, a book very for sure we are looking in high-end magazines if you have a high-end car magazine good content good photos good paper again is something what you keep your social media posts they stay for two seconds then you scroll through uh attention span is eight seconds then it's gone the magazine comes back stays on the table um you hand it over to the customer it makes something different the maximum amount would be spent on print or creating experiences or i would say social media and events events and again it's also events what kind of events give me an example the most expensive event by bentley spent i would say pebble beach is maybe our most it's also the biggest group we have okay what is it i don't know activities double beach is uh in part of the monterey car week one week in california um where i would say car enthusiasts from all over the world are coming you see you have auctions you have a lot of cars in in the region it's a festival of of good cars i have to say only of expensive cars it's amazing what you see all all centuries all ages all brands bed or life and it's a big gathering a lot of things are taking place so we have a villa we have We invite our customers.

1:01:48We give them a good weekend, good experience, some drives, some extraordinary events that we create there, some surprises. Goodwood is definitely one. It's also a big gathering, 250 ,000 people celebrating over all generations. And this is, by the way, the interesting stuff. You cannot say it's only for old people. It's not. It's for everyone, families, all generations. and the enthusiasm of the car or for the car did did not go away sometimes it's discussed this car is interesting anymore the next generation is all in iphones or in phones or whatever it means not yeah and the cars cars are fascinating and they stay fascinating i've lost two questions for you One is, you build cars for the king and the queen.

1:02:46Do you do anything differently in those cars? Is there some specification which only a king gets? By nature, the figure on the front of the red shell is specific. as this comes as a specific requirements also the stickers on the door under the lacquer are specific to the king but besides that it's a it gets some special treatment also from signaling and some special lights they need for the for the traffic but besides that it's a regular car does not get more power or different brakes or anything it's a um no special engine no special gearbox it's a regular bentley interesting when i was getting a tour of the factory i've done so many factory tours all along the world in incredible companies and i respect them a lot i have never seen the kind of pride which every individual had you yeah i can confirm this this makes a big difference like the way each and every from the person who was stitching to someone who was just using a sandpaper it was probably someone who's giving the whole tour like each and every individual the amount of proud like the pride they had like they were so proud about what they were doing in here in Bentley I think that stood out in fact like I told Williams that you know like who was showing us around I was like you need to come and like train us in our company to to have this kind of proud like this is so good but there must be something right right because there has to be something which probably you from a CEO perspective must be seeing in the company going right because when I met a young girl who was just two years in the company and three years in the company she was an apprentice and just about to get a job she was so excited and like feeling so proud that I'm getting a job here understandable because when you're young you're passionate etc right you met somebody who has been in this for 15 years in middle age.

1:04:53Mostly people in middle age are angry and angsty and they're not happy about wherever they are. He was so proud. And then I met somebody who was in the company for more than 40 years. That person was equally proud about it. And then I met his wife. She was incredibly proud as well about stitching this steering wheel. I was just fascinated throughout different ages, everybody. And they were not planted people. Like I could just randomly... No, no, no, you couldn't. I randomly met people. You can go everywhere. This is good. And honestly... What is that? Like what makes it... I was a kind of a newcomer for two years here.

1:05:32But you can immediately feel this is a difference. And... What do you think is the reason? What's the secret sauce? I would say it's the history and the consistency. making cars here for for more than 80 years this it all builds up and the product is more important than the people so it's not about sometimes you have companies that are driven very much by their founders and by their by their um by the people on the management that is that's driving the company in Bentley I would say it's all about the customer and it's all about the product and I think this is this is a common sense and people are sometimes controversial products could also be controversial but in Bentley that unites everyone it's about the product and the customer and we have the good thing is our people on the line they see customers every day walking through and they see the glance in their eyes and they see the smiles and they see the passion of the customers and i would say this is a big difference if you have if you know your customer if you have seen them if you see the world is traveling to crew but it's now not the center of the world we know people take their journey they're coming and they see that and then you get the connection you know who will get the result of what you're working you're not um it's also transparency because you know if if i fail in my doing today one of these guys will get a product that is maybe not perfect so it's also motivation on it that's kind of self-propelling if you would ask me how to engineer something like that honestly I don't have an answer but do you teach everybody who's young and who joins the company do you teach these values, do you tell them about it what's the reason we have a very good communication also on our values on belonging and we support people in that but the best is leading by example and if people are for 40 years in the company you cannot stage this It's, they are there.

1:07:56And they tell their story. And if they're for 40 years in the company, they don't care who is the CEO. But yeah, and that's a fair point. They contributed for 40 years. I'm very proud of these people. And we celebrate. We have a recognition and celebrate people that are 25 and 40 years with a big party. And this is part of this culture to say thank you. You've been here for 40 years. I will hand over a nice certificate and we will have some fun and nice dinner together, a nice summer party. And it's important to celebrate this and to give the recognition to people that are contributing and that are working here.