Rolls Royce recently announced that its future SUV, currently dubbed “Project Cullinan“, will be shaped like a traditional SUV. The famed British luxury car maker sent out a letter to its shareholders, as companies do, informing them about the Cullinan and released a couple of pictures to prove its SUV-ness. However, those pics were mere teasers. Now, some spy photos have arisen of the Cullinan driving about town, completely covered in camouflage. We don’t own the spy shots, so check them out at Auto Express.
From the front, this is very Rolls Royce. It has the same classic and massive upright grille that Rolls’ traditional wear and the same squinty headlights. All is good up front. From the side, we can also see that this massive SUV will also have the brand’s traditional suicide rear doors, which typically eliminate the B-pillar on Rolls’. However, I’m wondering how the brand can eliminate the B-pillar on such a heavy SUV and still pass rollover crash standards. We’ll see how that plays out.
What worries me, though, is that this seems to be based on the BMW X7. While that’s sort of to be expected, as all BMWs, and most likely Rolls Royces, will all be based on the same lightweight CLAR platform moving forward. However, it almost seems to have some BMW X7 to the design of it, especially at the rear. Admittedly, this could just be wearing some fake body panels to throw us off, as BMW does.
Overall, this thing looks massive, imposing and heavy, just as Rolls Royces are supposed to be. But it does kind of look wrong. There’s something off-putting about a Rolls Royce with actual utility. Rolls’ are supposed to be completely superfluous luxury items for the same of being completely superfluous. That’s what’s so great about them. Something about a Rolls for the family and their gear is bothersome. Maybe that’s just me.
[Source: Auto Express]
