Rolls-Royce SUV will not compromise brand

Luxury car maker Rolls-Royce will not compromise its exclusive image if it builds a sports utility vehicle (SUV), its chief executive said Tuesday.

Speaking to journalists in Singapore, Torsten Müller-Ötvös said the firm known for its stately sedans is now in the early stages of designing its first SUV for the super rich.

“I have tasked our designers to come up with some ideas on paper how they would imagine our car, the Rolls-Royce, would look like in this segment,” he said. ”This segment is interesting, it keeps growing and growing and growing, even at a time when the whole automotive industry was quite in a crisis.”

The auto press is abuzz over the idea of a Rolls-Royce SUV but Müller-Ötvös said the BMW-owned British company would tread carefully as “Rolls-Royce is not sporty, Rolls-Royce is not utility (and) it is not in the genes of this brand”.

“There is no decision yet made, and we aren’t rushing it, and there is also really no need to enter that segment. It only makes sense if this can be credibly represented by Rolls-Royce,” he said.

Bentley in July said it would go ahead with plans to launch an SUV by 2016. Lamborghini, which like Bentley is a unit of Volkswagen, is also eyeing the SUV market along with Fiat’s Maserati.

Porsche, also part of the Volkswagen group, is well ahead of the pack, with its sales boosted by its hugely popular Cayenne SUV.