Here’s Why Luxury Carmakers Are Going Vroom for the SUV Boom

by Paul A. Eisenstein

A two thousand sixteen Bentley Bentayga SUV at the two thousand sixteen Fresh York International Auto Showcase at the Jacob K. Javits Center in Fresh York, Fresh York. JUSTIN LANE / EPA

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As much as might be possible for a car costing over $250,000 and making more than six hundred horsepower, the Bentley Continental GT Speed is a relatively subdued vehicle. Not so the fresh two thousand seventeen Bentley Bentayga sitting alongside it at the Lime Rock race track in the middle of hilly Connecticut, two hours north of Fresh York City during a preview for automotive journalists.

Unabashedly bold, the Bentayga is being billed as “the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious, most special SUV in the world.” Add “most expensive.” When the fresh model starts rolling into U.S. showrooms in a duo months, it will carry a base price of $229,100. Add the long list of accessories and some buyers are likely to dual that figure. An optional Breitling clock alone is listed at $160,000.

How long Bentley will be the most expensive SUV — or the fastest and most powerful, for that matter — remains to be seen. Within the next few years, a Who’s Who list of the world’s most off the hook automotive manufacturers will be launching SUVs of their own, including the likes of Lamborghini, Aston Martin and even Rolls-Royce.

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The idea of a Rolls SUV might seem a little unlikely until one considers what’s happening across the automotive market. Even as U.S. auto sales surge to record levels, the market share of so-called light trucks, including pickups, minivans and SUVs, has also climbed to an all-time high.

The shift is happening at every price level, from entry level to the market’s most rarefied segments. Indeed, Bentley is so certain about the prospects for the Bentayga that it expects it will soon be the best-selling model in the British marque’s history. The same is true for Aston, which is working up a production version of the DBX sport-ute concept it exposed last year, and for Maserati, which expects to sell as many as 30,000 of its fresh Levante SUVs annually — toughly doubling its global sales.

“These days, if you ask buyers, more and more associate luxury with functionality,” says Enrico Billi, the Levante’s product manager.

Nowhere has that been more demonstrable than at Porsche. It set skeptics’ tongues a-wagging when, shortly before the dawn of the fresh millennium, the company announced plans to add an SUV alongside familiar sports cars like the 911. But these days, the Cayenne is the brand’s most popular model and, analysts will tell you, the critical key to Porsche’s current global success. It recently added a 2nd, slightly smaller model, the Macan, and can scarcely keep up with request.

That set up a race among mid-luxury competitors like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz to add utes of their own. The Mercedes SUV line-up has become so big that the German maker recently had to rechristen much of the mix so potential buyers could tell them apart.

Porsche actually wasn’t the very first in the luxury SUV space. Inbetween one thousand nine hundred eighty six and 1993, Lamborghini suggested the ground-shaking LM002, widely known as the “Rambo Lambo.” It only sold three hundred twenty eight of them, but Lamborghini’s so certain about the upcoming Urus model that it is doubling the size of its operations in the Modena suburb of Sant’Agata, Italy, while adding another five hundred jobs

The SUV, set to debut in 2018, will be “crucial for the success of the company. We need to be present in a growing segment that is becoming very well distributed all over the world,” said the former Lambo CEO who approved the project before shifting to sibling luxury brand Audi early this year.

The one high-line brand clearly identified with SUVs is Land Rover, tho’ its early products were more likely to be found on farms or slogging through mud in third-world markets. Today, it offers products like the Range Rover Long-Wheelbase Autobiography Black Holland & Holland edition. Fully loaded, the limited-edition model went for$285,000.

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