Bentley Wants To Know What China Thinks Of Its New SUV

If you didn't already know it, China has arrived. Bentley is tailoring its new SUV to meet Chinese buyers' tastes, because China is the company's largest market. But no one liked Bentley's new beast at the Geneva auto show, so the luxury carmaker is trying to find out why.

To get potential customers in on the design discussion, Bentley created an app on Weibo — the Chinese version of Twitter — to find out what China likes and doesn't like about their creation. The company already knows that wealthy Chinese car buyers like fast, flashy SUVs, but they have yet to find out why theirs falls short of the mark.

The survey asks, in Chinese of course, how buyers like (or don't like) the interior and exterior appearance, what seating configurations and engine options they prefer, and under what sort of conditions they would use the vehicle.

If Bentley were to go by American and/or British standards, they would build a bloated passenger vehicle packed with offroad goodies no one would ever use. But perhaps Chinese buyers are different. They certainly are fond of Buicks, which is something that hasn't been the case in Monroe Doctrine country since the space race was relevant. (Hat tip to Daniel!)

Photo credit: Bentley/Weibo