There’s a whole new range of SUVs on the way, dubbed the Super SUVs by the London-based ‘boutique luxury carmaker’ Eterniti, and the first in line is the Artemis – according to the company’s effusive press announcement. The Artemis will bring ‘the higher levels of luxury performance and exclusivity demanded by today’s wealthy buyers’, levels that have not, apparently, been available before. The Eterniti Artemis (which is something of a mouthful itself) will go into production later this year, and therefore before the other ‘Super SUVs’ from Bentley, Maserati and Lamborghini (see separate story), with models on sale by the autumn. Extra legroom in the rear allows for this vehicle to be chauffeured and as you would expect ‘only the finest’ leather, quilted undercarpets and boot trim, lambswool rugs, natural wood veneer (is there any other kind of wood?) and carbon fibre will make the interior a very luxurious place to be.
Up front, under the bonnet, is a twin-turbo 4.8-litre V8, with a claimed 600bhp and 750Nm (553lb ft) of torque offering a performance figure of 180mph. High speed on-road performance is obviously the aim, as the Artemis is being engineered by Alastair Macqueen who has three Le Mans wins to his name with Jaguar and Bentley, and the Eterniti test driver is former Grand Prix winner Johnny Herbert.
The Artemis was debuted at Beijing with a launch price of £210,000 (intriguingly a price for all markets except China, which will have ‘a unique pricing strategy’). For that price, you will get a full two-year, 100,000 mile warranty including servicing, by which time one can assume, owners will move on to the next ‘new thing’. As we closed for press, Eterniti announced that the company had taken five orders at the Beijing show, all for Chinese customers, which is a cool £1m-worth of business…
Lambo joins the party too…
If anyone needed confirmation of just how important the SUV market is for motor manufacturers across the globe, then last month’s Beijing Motor Show in China duly delivered, when Lamborghini, of all companies, launched the Urus 4×4. This extraordinary SUV can be casually dismissed, disparagingly so, by 4×4 enthusiasts but it is worth a second look and further consideration. It was unveiled by Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann as a concept vehicle and so not officially confirmed for production. However, there have been rumours for a while that this will be produced and Winkelmann admitted that ‘if’ it came to production the annual target sales would be 3000 units. You don’t make statements like that without a lot of previous planning and figures like that would make it the best selling Lamborghini vehicle of all time – by some margin – and with an estimated $200,000 price tag, undoubtedly the most profitable one.
Now where have we heard this story before, of an established global super sportscar manufacturer suddenly moving into the 4×4 business and producing a super fast SUV that goes on to become the company’s largest seller? Why Porsche, of course. A further comparison to Porsche is that the Urus has taken a similar route by using the ‘nose’ design of the company’s Aventador sports car, as the Porsche did with the 911. It’s early days, but Lamborghini do seem to have achieved a better nose job than the Germans. One thing is for sure; it is far better looking to the bulbous inflated ‘London taxi’ design unveiled by Bentley in Geneva this year.
It wouldn’t be difficult, or that expensive, to put into production as it is proposed to build it on the Audi Q7 platform, and fit it with a 4-litre turbocharged Audi V8 and deliver nearly 600bhp. Add to that the fact that the body would be made, as the sports cars, using carbonfibre, and it would be sensationally fast. It’s likely that we will have to wait until 2015 to see the first Urus…es (?) on the road. Lamborghini’s emblem is a Raging Bull and the name Urus is actually a now extinct European wild ox (which led one wag to ask “would you name your new car after a dead cow?”). Of course, Lamborghini has previous in the outrageous 4×4 stakes, having built the awesome LM002. We tested one of these in 1988, and at £82,000 (in ‘old’ money) the LM002 could be said to have been more expensive than the proposed Urus. Originally designed for the Saudi Arabian military, this V12 engined monster became a rich man’s plaything, although only around 300 in total were ever built. And as we say, Lamborghini is talking of 3000 Urus models a year, which only further underlines the importance of the SUV in the Italian sports car manufacturer’s plans. Who is next we wonder? Short odds on a Jaguar SUV, surely…
