It is the first Rolls-Royce with four-wheel drive, foldable bench seats and a rear windscreen wiper. Oh, and also its first SUV. We check out how the Cullinan breaks the mould.
It is the first Rolls-Royce with four-wheel drive, foldable bench seats and a rear windscreen wiper. Oh, and also its first SUV. We check out how the Cullinan breaks the mould.
It is easy to engineer a car to not cause you to spill your champagne on Knightsbridge; much harder to contain the Cristal within its flute on the rugged Rubicon Trail. For this task, Rolls-Royce’s boffins thoroughly rethought the Cullinan’s drivetrain. The air struts in the air suspension has been beefed up to add more cushioning, and a computer makes millions of calculations per second to account for ruts and rocks. The shocks also actively push a wheel into the ground, should it detect a loss in traction in that corner.
A small but noteworthy point: Rolls has supplied five charging ports in the Cullinan – in the latest USB-C flavour. The ditching of “legacy” USB Type A sockets, which virtually all new cars still come with for backward compatibility, proves that the manufacturer is not just paying lip service when it says that it hopes to capture a younger generation of one-percenters who would naturally not be caught dead with last year’s technology.
While picking the fixed individual rear seats over the standard foldable bench appears to miss the point of an SUV, Rolls-Royce customers are unlikely to ferry their Ikea flatpack furniture in their Cullinan anyway. Unless they have a wicked sense of humour. The benefit of the former option, besides the fixed centre console for the drinks cabinet, is the glass partition that isolates the cabin from the luggage compartment. That means the bellhops can take their time to load your bags, without polluting your space with exhaust fumes.
While you could already fit a picnic hamper in the trunk of your Rolls-Royce, the Cullinan takes the concept further. It offers interchangeable trays called Recreation Modules, which house all the equipment specific to your interest, be it drone racing, fly fishing or photography. The motorised drawers are made by commission at the RollsRoyce Bespoke Collective, so expect a perfect fit for all your paraphernalia.
