How Lamborghini learned to love SUVs

The Lamborghini Urus sports car excels at everything else that Lamborghini makes and has attracted large numbers of new customers to the popular sports car brand in the form of shards of glass.

SUV militants have harshly criticized the SUV’s foray into their beloved brands. But the Urus shows that even buyers of the luxury exotic find the SUV irresistible.

The 2021 Uros model year starts at about $ 220,000, which is an extremely high price for an everyday family car. This is what the Urus really should be – any Lamborghini person can drive every day and use it like the myriad SUVs that now fill segments in the middle of the auto market.

The car’s specifications and reviews of the Urus indicate that it is an amazingly versatile vehicle. It can drive from 0 to 62 mph in 3.2 seconds – remarkably fast acceleration for any vehicle, not to mention an SUV. It is designed to handle sports cars like suitable on a racetrack. But Lamborghini has also equipped the Urus for off-road driving – something Lamborghini is not known for.

But while some have said the Urus could be the ultimate all-in-one, some have criticized its design for straying too far from the elegant and rough shapes that made Lamborghini so popular. The Urus has also alarmed some sports car fans, in the same way as Porsche’s SUVs.

Some supercar makers remain on the sidelines of the SUV craze. British company McLaren is one such company, saying it doesn’t need an SUV to remain profitable. Other companies seem to have given up after some hesitation. For example, Ferrari is reported to be working on its own SUV, after years of internal resistance.

Urus and its success are signs of Lamborghini’s transformation into a different company than it has been for most of its history. It now has to stay in the market where sales of SUVs have skyrocketed. In the luxury and high-end segment alone, SUVs have gone from just under 12% of total global car sales in 2000 to 50% in 2020, according to LMC Automotive.

Decades ago, there were vehicles like pocket Cherokee stronghold Explorer and Toyota RAV4 began to bring the SUV concept to the masses. Now, high-end product makers, including some opponents, are seeing the way the market is going and decide not to fight it. Geoff Schuster, head of global forecasting for LMC Automotive, said trends often flow down from premium segments to the mass market.

“We are now witnessing this reversal as the prevailing trend has led premium brands to introduce SUVs into their market,” he said.