The sports utility Lamborghini Urus sells more than everything else Lamborghini manufactures and has attracted crowds of new customers to the brand best known for broken glass sports cars.
Supercar purists have severely criticized SUVs for the incursion of sport utility vehicles into their beloved brands. But Urus shows that even sophisticated exotic buyers find SUVs irresistible.
The 2021 Urus year model starts at almost $ 220,000, a very high price for a daily family vehicle. That’s really what the Urus should be – a Lamborghini that one can drive every day and use as the countless SUVs that now occupy segments in the middle of the automotive market.
Vehicle specifications and Urus reviews indicate that the vehicle is impressively versatile. It can drive 0-62 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds – remarkably fast acceleration for any vehicle, let alone an SUV. And it is built to be handled like a real sports car on a race track. But Lamborghini has also equipped the Urus for off-road driving – something Lamborghini is not known for.
But while some have said that the Urus could be the ultimate versatile vehicle, there are those who criticize its design for being too far removed from the elegant and irregular shapes that made the Lamborghini famous. Urus also bothered some sports car purists, as did Porsche SUVs.
Some supercar manufacturers remain on the sidelines of the SUV craze. British manufacturer McLaren is one such company, saying it does not need an SUV to remain profitable. Apparently, other companies gave in after some reluctance. For example, Ferrari is reportedly working on its own SUV after years of internal resistance.
Urus and its success are signs that Lamborghini is becoming a different company than it has been for most of its history. Now it must survive in a market where sales of sport utility vehicles have increased dramatically. In the premium and super-premium segment alone, SUVs went from just under 12% of total global vehicle sales in 2000 to 50% in 2020, according to LMC Automotive.
Decades ago, vehicles like the Jeep Cherokee, Ford Explorer and Toyota RAV4 began to bring the concept of a sport utility vehicle to the masses. Now, leading manufacturers, including some who have been resilient, are seeing the market path and deciding not to fight it. Trends often fall from premium segments to the mass market, said Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting at LMC Automotive.
“Now we are seeing that reversal in which the dominant trend has led premium brands to introduce the SUV to their market,” he said.