Rolls-Royce has offered the first glimpses of its forthcoming SUV.
Two officially-released images show the camouflaged car ‘Project Cullinan’, which Rolls-Royce states will begin testing in public in December. The Cullinan title will not necessarily be adopted as the name for the production version, expected to launch in 2018.
After Christmas the car will be taken to the Arctic Circle for cold-weather durability and traction testing, and this will be followed in 2017 by a hot-weather programme in the Middle East.
All of this is to ensure the car meets the ‘Effortless, everywhere’ phrase that Rolls-Royce has applied to it. Absent from the release, however, is any mention of the phrase SUV, the Cullinan described instead as a ‘all-terrain, high-sided vehicle.’
Major customers have also seen the engineering mule created to develop the new all-wheel-drive suspension system, and testbeds for the aluminium architecture that will become the basis of all new Rolls-Royce models released after 2018.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös describes the emergence of the test car as “an incredibly exciting moment in the development of Project Cullinan both for Rolls-Royce and for the patrons of luxury that follow us around the world.
“Bringing together the new four-wheel drive system and the new ‘architecture of luxury’ for the first time sets us on the road to creating a truly authentic Rolls-Royce which, like its forebears, will reset the standard by which all other luxury goods are judged,” Müller-Ötvös adds.
