If anything, the Bentleys actually have a worse record for reliability than the Phaeton does. There are several mitigating factors that Bentley has that VW doesn't and can't use, but more on that in a minute.
Bentley doesn't break down their sales by model, but their sales
haven't been all that great of recent either. Some recent signs of revival, but time will tell if they can sustain it.
Bentley brand sales, USA:
Year Number
2004 2394
2005 3654
2006 3856
2007 3990
2008 2693
2009 1367
2010 1430
2011 1877
2012 2315
2013 2872
At least in my part of the US, the new Conti doesn't seem to be very popular. If you see a Conti, it's usually a first-gen one. That said... their sales aren't a whole lot better
than the Phaeton's second year in the US, which was labeled a 'disappointment' even by VW.
2003 343
2004 1939
2005 820
2006 235
2007 17
The Phaeton's even closer sibling, the A8, has
much, much better sales - despite nearly as bad reliability - for many of the same reasons as the Bentley. Again - more on that in a minute.
2004 5943
2005 5430
2006 5038
2007 3826
2008 2825
2009 1463
2010 1521
2011 5700
2012 6002
2013 6300
One of the funny things about sales in the US is that you can easily offload even the worst new pile of crap for between 18-36 months. A certain percentage of people are willing to try anything new and different, then there's the rabid fanboys; between them you can usually unload some respectable numbers of cars.
It's what happens to sales after that period, when word of mouth has had time to circulate about what the thing actually is and how it is to live with that indicate whether it was actually a decent car. In this case, the Phaeton was released, a few people bought it, found out it was shit, told their friends (or had others observe it was shit and tell
their friends, and that was the end of it.
So, how do Bentley and Audi get away with it where VW doesn't? Simple.
1. Positioning of the brand. Bentley is positioned as very high dollar high-strung exotic and has never been much of anything else in the post-war era. Nobody expects a high dollar exotic to be reliable (and the Conti does not disappoint in this respect) so unreliability is not necessarily a big problem for them. Audi is also considered to be a higher end car, though not an exotic. Their excuse is their brand identity - extremely advanced tech laden luxury cars (which is why the A3 was an utter failure in the US). Advanced tech breaks, as everyone knows, so this is accepted to a great degree. What's VW? 'We make cheap German mainstream cars!" That means their vehicles are going to be held to a higher reliability standard by the market than the other two. The expected cost of maintenance is going to be different in the same way. There's more to be said here, but I have other points to touch on. Which leads us to...
2. Customer relations. Let's start with what happens when the cars inevitably break. When your Conti breaks down under warranty, usually a man comes out to where you are with another Bentley and hands you the keys. The broken Bentley is whisked away to be repaired while you continue on your way. Your new Audi A8 died? A tow truck is dispatched quickly and you are given a loaner Audi right away to minimize the disruption to your day. Phaeton died? "Ey, lady, we might be able to get a tow truck to you in about four hours. Our shop will be open when you get here but the loaner car people went home so I hope you can get someone to give ya a ride back!" Even if by some miracle you do get a loaner car, it's not even going to be a VW but whatever Enterprise Rent-A-Car happens to have in inventory that day. Around here, if it's late in the day, often that's going to be a small Kia or even a Chevy Spark.
With Bentley, you are treated like an extremely valued patron who should not have any grounds to give complaint about their treatment. With Audi, you are treated like an important customer who has better things to do than spend all day dealing with a problem that should not exist. With VW you are treated exactly the same as the 18 year old 'pizza delivery artist' who bought a stripped Golf on closeout that they really don't want to talk to because he spent 8 hours trying to negotiate another penny off the bottom line. VW USA's customer service is legendarily horrible. They really do not care what the car's problem is and they could not care less about what problems their defective product is causing their owners. More to the point, they don't seem to care what their dealers are doing either. VW is the only brand in the US where dealers feel compelled to advertise that they are 'female friendly' due to the bad reputation of the brand's dealers. Yes, it's that bad.
Americans can and will put up with some truly horrible cars - but only if we feel that we're not being taken for a ride. You have to at least *look* like you're trying and offer decent customer service; how do you think Hyundai has managed to survive in the US marketplace to become the powerhouse it now is when it started off with such garbage as the Excel/Pony? It wasn't on the strength of the product or even on the low price (though that can forgive a lot of sins) - it was purely on the strength of their customer service. They did what they could to make things right; they did their best to repair problems quickly and correctly. If something went badly wrong with your car, they simply gave you another one without batting an eye instead of making you wait or worse fight them over it. They visibly were trying to improve and people here will reward that sort of thing. People here will *not* reward a poor product backed with poor or even abusive customer service and that's what the Phaeton was in the US.
3. Appearance. Neither the Bentley or Audi offering looks exactly like a car known to mostly be sold to credit-less college students or junior secretaries with a small salary. The VW does.