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Rolls-Royce Cullinan review
“The Cullinan: named after a diamond, styled after a taxi, yet wonderfully dignified and remains every inch a Rolls-Royce”
Good stuff
Imagine a Phantom that can go off-road, spooky refinement, build quality, does things differently to other SUVs
Bad stuff
Uneasy looks, fuel consumption, don’t have it for the practicality
What is it?
Rolls-Royce has never been one for hiding its light under a bushel. "Our answer to history, to the visionaries, adventurers, explorers and those who believe in the supremacy of liberty is the Rolls-Royce Cullinan," CEO Torsten Müller Ötvös declaimed at the SUVs launch. "It dramatically evolves the parameters of super-luxury travel. It is effortless, everywhere."
And what about when the hyperbole machine isn’t in overdrive?
Launched back in 2018, the Cullinan was Roll’s belated and controversial response to the boom in SUVs. Nothing symbolises human contrariness more than the rise of the vehicle designed to do things 95 per cent of its end users will never engage with and, depending on where you stand, the Cullinan is either the pinnacle of automotive achievement or a near-£300k white elephant.
As much a white elephant as the Ferrari Purosangue?
We’d argue Rolls-Royce’s brand values - and history - chime better with the principles of a modern off-roader than Ferrari’s. Nevertheless, what’s interesting about both cars, what they have in common besides similar price tags and rear-hinged back doors, is that they’re not afraid to do things differently to the rest of the SUV herd.
The Cullinan, like the Purosangue, is a Royce first, an SUV second. Passenger comfort matters way more than boot volume or cabin versatility (although we will talk about that in the Interior section). The rear seats in our test car didn’t fold, in fact luggage was separated from people by a glass divider. You can have ‘normal’ folding seats, but why would you? You might as well have a Volvo XC90.
Quite. Now, what goes on underneath?
The Cullinan reworks the so-called ‘Architecture of Luxury’ structure that lies beneath the fabulous Phantom. We’re talking a modular aluminium spaceframe, with castings in each corner and extrusions in between, reconfigured here into a form that sits higher and shorter than in its limousine brother, with a split tailgate (Rolls airily calls it The Clasp) added for the necessary versatility. The new chassis is 30 per cent stiffer than the previous one, an improvement that helps the transition to super-sized 4x4.
To the Phantom’s preternatural calmness, the Cullinan adds all the soft- and hardware needed to send it down the road and up a mountain with the sort of invincibility that saw early Rolls patron T.E Lawrence turn his car (nicked off a woman in a Cairo nightclub, or so the story goes) into an unexpectedly robust war machine.
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