Three years ago, Rolls Royce announced that they are jumping on the bandwagon of building an SUV with their new Project Cullinan. The British marque called it the “high-bodied” vehicle all these years, but now the carmaker has decided to keep the name of the project as the official name of the SUV. The Cullinan will be revealed later this year.
The all-new Cullinan will be based on the new aluminium spaceframe ‘Architecture of Luxury’ similar to the Phantom MkVIII. The new platform is built ground up by Rolls Royce engineers and not borrowed from BMW’s CLAR platform as was speculated earlier. It will sit alongside the Phantom in the newly revamped line-up and will eventually be the biggest and most luxurious vehicle in the Rolls-Royce stable.
Powering the Cullinan will be a reworked Rolls-Royce 6.8-litre V12 unit, and there’s also some talk about a plug-in hybrid variant making it to the range in the future. The iconic design language with the gargantuan radiator grille will be a part of the design. Meanwhile, the overall proportions seem quirky hidden under the camouflage in the official images.
Rolls-Royce Cullinan will compete against the Bentley Bentayga in the super-luxury SUV market currently dominated by the Range Rovers and the Bentley Bentayga apart from the Cadillac Escalade, Porsche Cayenne and other German SUVs. Rolls Royce will bring in the Cullinan in India as well but don’t expect it to land in so soon.
