Bentley slaps on a 5 per cent price hike for UK Cars

Bentley are raising UK Car Prices by 5% from 1st April 2009

I’m sure all us Brits still think of Bentley as a good old British Car Producer. But when we pause and think we remember that they are in fact part of VW, and therefore very much a European car maker. Which explains why, despite the cars being bolted together here, Bentley feels the need to put UK Car prices up by 5% from 31st March, due to the current weakness of Sterling.

But unless you’re one of those people who walk in to a showroom and pay list plus all the extras (and take out gap insurance and paint insurance and…), or you want to get your hands on a Bentley Continental Supersports, then it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference.

The simple fact is that you can get a good £20k off any Bentley at the moment (and probably more if you know what you’re doing), so a notional price increase will make no difference to the actual sale price.

But I wonder what’s going to happen when the tables turn, which they will soon, and the Euro starts to crash and burn? Will Bentley put prices down, or will they claim that their raw material costs have soared because of the weak Euro?

Because there is no way the Euro can survive the current world recession intact. How can such diverse economies as Germany, Portugal and Ireland, not to mention the Eastern Bloc countries, possibly control their economies with the blunt instruments they have to hand with centrally governed interest rates and taxes? The simple answer is they can’t, so at some point soon the Euro zone will start to unravel.

So if I where Bentley I’d have bitten the bullet and kept prices the same, and then basked in having Sterling to buy raw materials when the Euro falls out of bed.

But then, what do I know?!

Prices from 1st April 2009

By Cars UK