There appears to be confusion surrounding the launch of the new Rolls-Royce for 2017, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. To most observers, critics and motoring experts it looks like an SUV, it performs like an SUV and but for that famous little old lady, the Spirit of Ecstasy, sitting on front of it, it would probably be an SUV.
But Rolls-Royce may just have a hang-up about naming their forthcoming Cullinan an SUV, an image problem, or an image crisis?
“From the searing deserts of Africa and the Middle East to the freezing snows of the Arctic Circle; from the grassy glens of the Scottish Highlands to the towering canyons of North America, the designers, engineers, craftspeople and artisans of the House of Rolls-Royce have shaped, tested and polished this unique motor car to eliminate any flaw,” Rolls-Royce said in their latest spectacular announcement.
The Cullinan will have a 6.8 litre petrol engine, the same one used in the Rolls-Royce Phantom, and they are ditching diesel in favour of a future plug-in hybrid option. It looks and behaves like a four-by-four, but with a price tag of £300,000 it’s perhaps fair that Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös is a bit queasy about the luxury motor being labelled an SUV.
In all the glorious wordage of their latest PR, there is no mention anywhere of the Cullinan being an SUV, just diamonds. Did we mention the diamonds?
“The name Cullinan has been hiding in plain sight since we revealed it as the project name some years ago,” Müller-Ötvös said.
“It is the most fitting name for our extraordinary new product. Cullinan is a motor car of such clarity of purpose, such flawless quality and preciousness, and such presence that it recalibrates the scale and possibility of true luxury. Just like the Cullinan Diamond, the largest flawless diamond ever found, it emerges when it is perfect and exists above all others.”