Porsche did it, and in marketing offices all around the automotive world, that’s supposedly made it OK for everyone to think they can do it.
And maybe they can. But should they?
From GoAuto
ROLLS-ROYCE will next year decide whether to bring its much-rumoured SUV to market and already has internal design concepts on the drawing board.
Nooooooooooo!
The world seems to be full of people and companies doing stupid, meaningless things just because they CAN. Just because you CAN drown kittens doesn’t mean you should. I mean that in a purely metaphorical sense, of course (and if you think that’s tasteless, you should hear a few of the ones I discarded. Anyone who drowns kittens ought to be jailed).
Rolls Royce is sorted. What they CAN do if they put the company’s collected mind to work is irrelevant.
Rolls Royce make big-ass limousines that carry super-rich people around, cosseting them with silence, cushioning, aroma and twenty different types of massage. Rolls Royce is the standard. Rolls Royce needs diversification like a fish needs a bicycle.
This is Rolls Royce. From PetrolBlog:
Twenty cars a day are built at Goodwood….. and every single one is the very best that it can be. Allow me to demonstrate this fact with a specific example: torque wrenches.
Now, as the vast engines and gearboxes are mated with axles on the rolling rig prior to being stuffed into a shell, the mechanics torque up all the bolts… and when they reach the sufficient amount of twist, the wrench glows orange. This signifies that it’s being recorded – that specific bolt was wrenched to that particular torque on that date, at that time, by that person. It’s all noted in the computer via Bluetooth. So if that bolt shakes itself loose in thirty years’ time, they can find out why. Imagine that level of fastidiousness, applied to everything in the car. It’s incredible.
That’s what Rolls Royce does. It’s a statement. It’s not a fictional statement or an aspirational statement. It’s a statement of fact.
The very thought that Rolls Royce needs anything other than what it’s already got is demeaning. It makes every Rolls Royce that they make right now a lie.
Rolls Royce says it’s still considering whether or not to make an SUV. To me, it should be a no-brainer. Companies like Porsche could do it because everyone knows that the 911 doesn’t sell enough on its own for the company to survive. Porsche needs the Cayenne. It needs the Panamera.
If you’re Rolls Royce, the word ‘need’ should not be in your lexicon. An admission of need – such as the need to increase profitability by making a Rolls Royce SUV – makes a mockery of the very reason a brand like Rolls Royce exists in the first place.
We always seem to look up to the Germans for their engineering. Rolls Royce’s German owners have respected the brand up until now – and hopefully sanity will prevail and they’ll continue to respect it in the future. But the lessons learned from model expansion with BMW, Mini, Porsche and other Germans makes me fear for this automotive institution.
Won’t someone think of the rich little children (and their kittens)?
20 years ago I would have said it was a bad idea. Today? The market has changed. I did a deal on a car yesterday, a family estate car. 5 years ago I could have had a huge choice from Saab, Ford, Renault, Peugeot, Volvo etc. I was only able to find a handful of each, even on line. It was much easier to find an SUV.
Saab and Jaguar failed to read the tea leaves about diesel in the early 2000s and payed the price, Rolls needs to adapt to the changes in the market.
because.
Just because.
Simply because.
If you build it they will come.
Yea sure there is plenty of garage space in UAE……
JonC has it right: they should still be market – focused. I’m also very much with yiu, Swade, that it would be a shame. Rolls is unique. If they wanted to be Land Rover, that could have happened with a merger and both would have been better for it.
I don’t think it’s so much them wanting to become Land Rover, more that Land Rover are moving onto Rolls territory. Look at how th European volume manufacturers have been squeezed by the premium brands building smaller cars.
Great interview in Car about 15 years ago with Rover management debating if a premium small car could sell. There is little bit of this driven by reaction to the Bentley SUV.
It doesn’t matter the trigger point, Rolls veering into the SUV market would have been better as a merger of established brands. The synergy would have been beautiful.
Looks like a Mercedes Geländewagen with a plastic DIY kit (including a fake RR radiator grille) from the early 80s…
The SUV picture in this story is exactly that – a really, really bad attempt by someone to make their SUV look like a Roller.
I Think it’s a Patrol underneath …
KJ
Not sure I agree. As far as I’m concerned all the big Rolls Royces up to the 1950s (Silver Ghost, Phantom) looked like SUVs. They were tall oversized wagons, albeit without the hatch. There is some potential for BMW to create an automobile that is a Rolls first and an SUV second.
Country Estate with Hatch….em, different, but then Range Rover are already there!!
Yes, but Range Rovers are common now. I see them all the time. A Rolls Royce is still something special.
Maybe they can come up with something unique enough to define a new class, something like Terry9000k suggested. That would be cool, but nothing me-too-ish.
No! This makes a boxy but nice Volvo 244 look like an aerodynamic egg!
This car already exists and its a called a RangeRover. It may not have glowstick torque wrenches (or it may) but its the benchmark in the segment in every sense.
On a related note of pedantry, I would have though Rolls (ie BMW) would aim to make a Luxury Utility Vehicle (LUV) not SUV if they were to bother at all. SUV choices are a dime a dozen. Still, it could just be the board at BMW having long-term sellers remorse over letting RangeRover go when they had it ten years ago.