Interview: Frank-Steffen Walliser

‘Walliser’, Bentley’s new CEO tells me, is a Swiss-German word for ‘Welsh’, though we’re not yet on sufficiently cosy terms for me to try calling him Frank Wales. But he may well be familiar to you, thanks to 29 years in some of the most high-profile jobs at his old employer, Porsche. The Wallissssssss hypercar? Walliser led the project. He then became head of Motorsport from 2014-2019, a period in which Porsche just happened to win Le Mans three times on the trot. He then became ‘Mr 911’ for a few years looking after Porsche’s most fabled product, so cars like today’s Dakar and S/T are both ‘his’, since when he has been in charge of overall vehicle development of all Porsches.

So if the person you wanted to head your car company was an engineer of the highest possible standing, you’d be hard pressed to find another. But there is another side to Walliser too.

Spool back to a press conference at Le Mans in 2016 when Porsche, having fielded a highly competitive RSR in the GTE Pro category for the first two rounds of the season and again at the Le Mans test day, found itself 3.8sec behind class debutants Ford. So beneficial was the Balance of Performance decision to Ford and so damaging to Porsche it relegated the Stuttgart squad from front runners to also-rans.

Those who were there – and I was – will never forget Walliser’s tears of frustration at what he regarded as a simply unfair ruling handed down to a team which had played it completely by the book. Whether it was or not, it looked for all the world like Ford had sandbagged its way through the first two races just to make sure it got the best possible deal for the only race that mattered. So equipped, Ford duly won its class, 50 years after its first victory at Le Mans, a dream result not only for Ford but presumably also the ACO which handed out the BoP ruling.

So the man has passion too. And given that his appointment would have been approved at the very highest level of the VW board of management, that says a lot about the sort of person they want running Bentley and the direction in which they want him to take it.

We sit down together at a restaurant at the top of one of the highest Swiss mountain passes, where Bentley is launching the heavily revised, hybrid-powered Continental GT. He has been in the job for precisely 80 days. So I ask him first the simplest question of all for a man in his position. What is a Bentley?

‘You know other companies have owners’ clubs. We don’t. We have the Bentley Driver’s Club and I think that says a lot. Being sporting is part of the Bentley brand, and maybe even more sporting than it is now. Number one, a Bentley is a driver’s car and now I’ve driven all our current range and some of our heritage cars too, my impression is of course that the cars are really good, but also that they are underrated.’

So what, I wonder, can be done about that?

‘Maybe we can do something more at the extremes. I mean if we made a more extreme Continental GT I don’t see people having a problem with that…’

But he’s not done yet:

‘I also think we should surprise our customers and followers a bit, do something unexpected which brings some real excitement but also broadens the base of what people think we can do.’

He also clearly wants to elevate Bentley’s position within the VW Group, and thanks to the sales and profits returned under his predecessor finds himself in charge of a company with unprecedented clout in Wolfsburg.

‘We now have such amazing technical capabilities in Crewe but we’re also still a very small company within the Group, which means we can be agile. You can only go so far just by taking something and adapting it a bit. But we sell cars at a less price-sensitive part of the market so why not use that, and our low volumes to become a technology leader for the Group?’

It’s a point well made at this event, where Bentley’s first V8 hybrid is being wheeled out to the world’s press. As Walliser will know better than anyone, Porsche had a V8 hybrid in the Panamera in 2017, the same family of engine in the same family of car.

‘We could be front-running in future,’ he claims, ‘a proving ground for new technologies.’

This, then, is a different path for Bentley to that trodden in recent times where it has had to adapt hand-me-down technology and componentry to its own uses. It has been phenomenally successful at it, as the fact the Flying Spur limousine can trace its roots back to that Panamera clearly shows. So why will Walliser be able to change all that?

‘A lot of it comes down to relationships. Bentley is successful now, but to keep it successful depends on the network it has between the two most important ‘donators’ within the Group – Audi and Porsche. And perhaps that’s another reason I was considered for this job, because I bring that network with me and know a lot about what they have coming in the future.’ By which he means everything.

But for all its success, Bentley is a company that, so far as things appear, has a problem. The Bentayga was first shown in 2015, the Continental GT in 2017 and Flying Spur in 2019, and while both Bentayga and Conti have been heavily facelifted in that time, at its core even Bentley’s youngest car is already five years old. And however good a car may be, the market is always drawn to something new. It is a problem Walliser seems to acknowledge.

‘I have emphasised from day one that we need a deep look at our products. The brand is driven by the product: the brand gives you orientation, but customers are not asking for brand, they’re asking for product. So we have to ask how long a product can run for, when an update is needed, how big must it be to get people excited again, and it must be appealing. You can make a car that drives really well, but if it doesn’t look right, you will fail.

‘It takes time and it takes money. And while we have some money now, you have to spend it wisely. We can’t create a peak from which we fall down again, we need a continuous growth plan. It will take time to get the resources together, but it’s a lot of my daily work.’

And what of areas of the market in which Bentley no longer has a stake, such as that once occupied by the wonderful Mulsanne? Walliser is first to say the current product line lives in a very small space.

‘There is no question we can extend the brand in all areas, whether you’re talking about the SUV brand [Bentayga], sporty brand [Continental GT] or luxury brand [Flying Spur], but my first question was “where is the hero car, the top of the line car?” and the answer is we have three hero cars.’

But when I ask if it would be better to have just one hero car, his answer is immediate:

‘I would say yes. But we have to look at the money, the timing and what is appropriate. In theory, yes we know we have to do that, the question is when…’

Which sounds very much to me like a new Mulsanne is coming, albeit some distance hence.

Could it be, then, that the first Bentley EV, due around 2026 could be a super luxury rival to the Rolls-Royce Spectre? I put it to Walliser that it would be a natural fit, and he agreed, but…

‘There isn’t enough time. I want to grow this company but you achieve nothing by trying to do everything at once, and it all failing.’

What does seem likely is that the ultra-exclusive, super low-volume cars like the Batur, Bacalar and continuation vintage racing cars produced by Bentley’s Mulliner division will continue. Walliser says no decisions about what the next cars will be have been taken but, ‘We have the customers, the facilities and the expertise and the market is good.’

The conversation turns to electric Bentleys and the company’s now relinquished position to become an EV-only brand by 2030.

‘We have not yet decided when that will now be. Clearly there’s a dip at the moment but the trend towards EV will continue. It has to. But there’s a lot to be learned by governments about consumer choice and uncertainty. And when there is uncertainty about the future the consumer just chooses to keep the car they already have. In Germany now, the average car is nine years old. It used to be seven.

‘Also we have to pay attention to the fact that when it comes to more expensive cars, the cars people buy because they want them rather than need them, the trend remains clearly towards mechanical cars. Plug-ins are accepted but the demand for expensive electric cars…’ Here Walliser pauses and takes a deep breath, ‘it’s small,’ he says with not inconsiderable feeling.

Finally talk turns to sustainable fuels, a matter close to Walliser’s heart after his time at Porsche and its well-known collaboration with Siemens to manufacture sustainable e-fuels in Chile. He is evangelical on the subject.

‘The goal is not to introduce battery electric vehicles, it is to reduce CO2. This is what has the biggest impact on mankind. This is what my simple, engineering mind tells me: there are 70 million cars sold each year. There are 1.4 billion cars on the road. Make all new cars sold battery electric and the maths is simple: the transition takes 20 years. But 2035 [the year many governments aim to ban sales of pure petrol and hybrid cars] is only 10 years away. And the industry is not selling 70 million EVs a year. It’s seven million. It will of course accelerate, but there is a gap and that gap has to be filled by sustainable fuels.

‘If you put synthetic fuel in the fuel lake, it will bring down CO2. And while it is more expensive to manufacture [Walliser says a litre of petrol costs around 60 cents, while the target for synthetic fuel is between $1 and $1.20], if the fact that it produces much less CO2 means it is taxed less, the price to the customer can be the same. Then the customer will always choose e-fuel. Make it a little cheaper and the market will decide immediately, and once you have that demand, then you have a business case, then the investors required to build the infrastructure will come.

‘The issue with green energy is not the same as with conventional fuel. That was always an issue of finite supply. With green energy the supply is infinite: the issue is storage and an e-fuel is a way of storing green energy. It is very simple.’

Final final question. ‘Will Bentley go racing again?’

‘Would I like to go racing? Yes. Where should Bentley go racing? That’s easy. GT or hypercar? For me it’s a hypercar, but do I want to go now when the level of competition is perhaps the highest it has ever been? The way I see it is that it’s a lot of money and after all my years in racing with Porsche, I would never do an underfunded racing project. When I was involved with the GT1 programme [which won Le Mans in 1998] I was told by the R&D boss, “if you are not prepared to spend the last million to win, don’t spend the first 20 million. If you’re not ready to spend that extra million you didn’t expect to spend in order to win, don’t go racing.”

‘Racing would fit the Bentley brand, its heritage but can we do it now? But we have to look after the business first. That is our top priority.’