Profits at Volkswagen's luxury Bentley brand this year will "certainly exceed" last year's slightly positive result, Bentley chief Franz-Josef Paefgen told Germany's Automobilewoche weekly.

Bentley expects to produce around 8,000 cars this year, up from 6,576 last year, Mr Paefgen added in remarks to the industry paper released ahead of publication yesterday.

He said around 400 of VW's new four-door Flying Spurs would be built at Volkswagen's plant in Dresden, Germany this year, using extra capacity not currently needed for the luxury VW Phaeton sedan which it builds there.

The Dresden factory would be used as overspill for its main plant in England "for the foreseeable future", Mr Paefgen said. "Only in this way can we avoid unacceptable delivery times."

Mr Paefgen said that next year Bentley would address the German market more. "The number of well-off customers there promises considerable potential in sales volume."

He added that Bentley had no current plans to offer a hybrid model - fuelled partly by electricity - as many other carmakers are doing as oil prices hover at record highs.

"If the demands of the market or of lawmakers change fundamentally, we could immediately access the necessary technology from Volkswagen," he said, adding that it would take two or three years from that time to get a model on the market.