Dubai: A Rolls-Royce SUV? It need no longer be an outlandish flight of fancy as one would thought even as recently as November. At least, outside of the carmaker’s corporate headquarters in Goodwood.
After years of insisting that it cannot see making anything outside of its super-luxury cars, the British manufacturer is now signalling a thaw from that mindset.
“What we are doing currently is looking at the [SUV] segment in a way to better understand how a Rolls-Royce would look like if we entered it,” said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. “It means we are doing the first sketches how it could be, how it might look like... but no decision has been taken yet.”
But isn’t it too radical a departure from the manufacturer’s longstanding stance?
“There’s been lots of speculation [over the years] on the SUV,” said Müller-Ötvös. “But what we have said consistently in the past is that there were no plans on our hand.
“We are not in a rush to launch one... [but] if we do come to the market it will be with a proper version.”
While Rolls-Royce has confirmed its plans — and whether it does go through with it is still open-ended — two other high-end manufacturers are closing in near the finish lines with their debut SUV offerings. Bentley’s SUV is scheduled to roll out in 2015, while the Italian marque Maserati’s Levante is to be one of the hotly anticipated model launches this year.
As such, there is so much action being compressed into the SUV and crossover categories. Audi’s Q7 remains perennially popular and will be updated in 2015, but the German manufacturer has confirmed the entry level Q1. There is Porsche with its baby SUV with a catchy name as the Macan.
Even if the proposed SUV is still only on the drawing board, there is plenty that Rolls-Royce can make do this year. There is the powerful — and that is saying it mildly given the twin-turbocharged V12 it sports — Wraith, which is to benefit from all-year availability.
“Wraith will be in full swing and I am confident Rolls-Royce will see another good year, the US economy is much better than in years before,” the CEO added.
“The Middle East uptake has been fantastic. But if demand comes in higher than we anticipate, we will still not be raising our capacity. We would be more than happy to cater to demand and that would be through changing the shifts even more intelligently.”
“The way we do business is [by limiting] volumes. The last thing we want is have customers feel we are pushing.”
