Lambo SUV has to wait | Window Replacement Usa

An artist?s impression of how a Lamborghini soft-roader could look. Illustration: Chris Harris.

Long-awaited soft-roader will come after Gallardo replacement.

Lamborghini, a company associated with very fast cars, is moving very slowly towards expanding its line-up. CEO Stephan Winkelmann revealed at the Geneva motor show the brand?s long-awaited SUV is still at least four years from reality.

He says the small size of the company means any expansion will be slow and the SUV will have to wait for the Gallardo replacement, due in the next two years.

But the usually forthcoming Winkelmann became evasive when asked if the new Gallardo would ditch the naturally-aspirated V10 for a smaller, turbocharged powerplant.

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?This is what I can say ? I need to go,? he told Drive.

?I will not talk about the future in this detail.? when pushed further he admits emissions regulations around the world are making turbocharged engines more appealing.

?We showed with Aventador, it?s less than a year old [that naturally-aspirated engines are still viable],? he says.

?We did it and we are not saying goodbye to naturally-aspirated engines so soon. But it is clear there is a hassle with emission laws which is not easy to tackle.?

If the company made the switch it would be the first turbocharged car in its history.

Once the Gallardo is replaced attention will turn to the much talked about SUV. Winkelmann all-but-confirmed, after years of increasing speculation, that it the SUV has been chosen over a sports sedan.

?There are mainly three segments we are looking at ? the Estoque, the limousine; a 2+2, like the Espada, and then there is the SUV,? he says. ?The SUV, making the analysis, is the most emotional segment we are seeing today, we have a lot migration towards the SUVs. By talking to our customers and other people who are driving high-end cars, they are saying ?this is the car which I think is going to fit for Lamborghini.??

He says the SUV will be well suited to Lamborghini?s biggest market, the USA, as well as growing markets in Russia and China.

But while he recognises it is important for the brand to increase its sales, he is adamant the soft-roader won?t be produced in big volume.

?It would never be huge numbers,? he says. ?Don?t get me wrong, it won?t be sky-rocketing or doing huge numbers, it is about a very limited approach on a very high end car that is not diluting the brand.

?In the last two years we did an average of 2000 cars, more or less. It?s clear that we need to do something that is more than this, because otherwise it is not worth it. Bentley did 7000, Ferrari did 7000, Aston Martin is going down but did 4000 or something. For us, the environment is something there. We are producing more than 60 million cars this year, if you do four, five six or seven [thousand sales] it is not going to change the picture of the landscape.?

Winkelmann also dismisses any suggestion that Bentley?s decision move into the SUV segment will be a problem, even though both are under the Volkswagen Group umbrella.

?I think the car I have in mind, if we?re talking about SUVs, is very different? I don?t think this is going to affect negatively one brand or the other,? he says.

Even though the company has looked into both the sports sedan and GT segments, Winkelmann rules out any further expansion beyond the SUV until after the end of the decade.

?It will take us years to do the third [model, the SUV], years,? he says. ?We are very small company, we have less than 900 people [and] we have a lot of projects in the pipeline. We have to do one project after another, it is almost impossible for us to do it in parallel because we are so small and so tiny as a company. once we do the third one and we get there and we do the third one, even if we would think about something else it is not going to be in this decade.?

Another car Lamborghini is in no rush to produce, according to Winkelmann, is the Roadster version of the Aventador; despite teasing the concept with the head-turning Aventador J in Geneva.

?We have time, because the Aventador coupe has an order bank of 18 months; and we already began producing the car in late summer last year,? he says. ?This means that we are producing at a pretty high level and the order bank is not reducing, so it would be pretty stupid to push into a new car immediately.?

As for the J, that will remain one-off despite strong demand from customers.

?In the last three days I could have sold it another three times, and that?s just me? We could have done another 10 cars,? he says.

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