Tag: Rolls Royce

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)?