"Bentley has always been in love with the idea of a punchy, powerful two-seater." The company's boss Wolfgang Duerheimer is talking to TopGear about the EXP 10 Speed 6, the Geneva Show concept for a pure two-seat front-engined supercar. Is it an idea whose time is come?

For an answer, Crewe people aren't just stroking their chins and consulting a crystal ball or sticking a licked finger in the breeze. The gorgeously finished concept car is a tool for some rigorous research. Duerheimer says, "This car will be taken to serious product clinics in Europe and the US and China. We will do our homework and look at the customer data."

He says they have about a year to decide if this is the right thing for an extra model line ­ not a replacement for any existing Bentley. That's because, he explains, "when the Bentayga SUV is executed, the engineers can jump to the next product."

Remember, the Bentayga was previewed by a concept car called the EXP9, so the EXP 10 label on this car has a resonance.

The smaller sports car is a project they wanted to do for ages. Around four years ago a similar project had got to full-scale model stage. But it was parked when the bosses looked at the ballooning sales of high-end SUVs and decided to go that way instead.

But the styling of the EXP 10 isn't a direct evolution of that earlier model. They started from scratch. Duerheimer says the car we see today didn't take long because "When you give the designers a brief like that, it's like letting them off the leash."

Actually, Sangyup Lee, Bentley's head of exterior and advanced design, tells me they did have some ideas up their sleeves before the nod came from the boardroom. "It was a skunk works project at first, and then we showed the idea to management and they approved."

See the EXP 10 on the Geneva show floor alongside a Continental GT and it's obviously a much lower, smaller car, not just a re-skin. So what platform could it use? On the other side of the VW Group, Porsche is working on a matrix called MSB. This has a longitudinal front engine and RWD/AWD. It's for the next Panamera, among other things, and it's lighter than the current Panamera skeleton. Duerheimer says a production version of the EXP 10 "could be the MSB. But it's not fixed. You can carryover our corner units [suspensions, driveshafts, brakes, hubs etc] and put them in a new structure." Would it be lightweight? "I'll sleep on that." He says a Bentley has to feel strong, solid. Lightness isn't in its DNA.

But Lee says, "Our heritage is weight, but it's also torque and luxury. Now we want to develop a sports car against the AMG GT and Aston Martin Vantage. It would still be the most luxurious car among them. But we want kids to have a poster of a Bentley on their walls. The Bentley brand design has been very safe. Now we want to push forward."

Of course Bentley had a go at probing its design limits before. The EXP 9, the concept for the Bentayga, had a front end design that soured the milk. A lesson has been learned.

The front end is the most obvious way things have changed. The EXP 10's grille is lower and wider than now. The four round lamps are a Bentley fixture, Lee says, but it's obvious they pushed the boundaries here, and poured a lot of love into the detail. He makes me crouch down in front of the car, and sure enough they are perfectly round from that angle.

But as you stand back up and see them from higher, or from the side of the car, they stretch into ovals, adding intrigue. He also points to the spiralling diamond detail inside the lamps. "We call them whisky glasses," he says. It's an echo of the quilted leather inside the cabin.

Around the sides of the car, there very some very subtle negative surfaces, and again that helps make it look light. And at the tail, the lights are pure ovals to match the tailpipes. "before we always had the lit ovals in rectangular lights," Lee points out, with a 'why did we do that?' expression.

Lee insists the general shape and proportions of the EXP 10 are realistic. "It's not some La La Land concept." The doors are the right size to get in and out, there's enough room inside, the mechanical bits would fit.

Duerheimer is keen to emphasise that if it became real, it wouldn't be bottom-of-the-range. "It will be smaller than the Continental GT but not cheaper." Three months ago he'd told me the sports-car and convertible segment is shrinking. "Yes," he says now, "It is a declining market at present. If we followed the market we would do a second SUV." But it's pretty obvious he's looking for an excuse not to follow the market. And the EXP 10 could well be it.