Lamborghini Prepares To Introduce ‘Urus’ Luxury SUV in 2018

Automobili Lamborghini announces a luxury SUV as a third model to join its product range. The market introduction of the series model is planned for 2018. A concept of the car was first presented as the Lamborghini Urus in 2012 at the Beijing auto show.

The new ve­hi­cle will be pro­duced in San­t’A­gata Bolog­nese and will her­ald ad­di­tional growth and sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties across the mar­que with the ex­pan­sion of the prod­uct range. It will also de­ter­mine a sub­stan­tial in­crease in the pro­duc­tion ca­pac­ity of the fac­tory. Over the life­cy­cle of the new ve­hi­cle the com­pany will in­vest hun­dreds of mil­lions of Eu­ros.

The pro­ject will be re­al­ized due to the joint com­mit­ment of sev­eral par­ties in­volved, in­clud­ing Volk­swa­gen Group with AUDI  AG as Lam­borgh­ini share­holder, the Ital­ian Min­istry of Eco­nomic De­vel­op­ment, In­vi­talia (Ital­ian na­tional agency for in­ward in­vest­ments and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment), Emilia Ro­magna Re­gion, the Union Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the en­tire Au­to­mo­bili Lam­borgh­ini team.

Au­to­mo­bili Lam­borgh­ini Pres­i­dent and CEO Stephan Winkel­mann de­clares: “This is a proud mo­ment for every­body in Lam­borgh­ini. The in­tro­duc­tion of a third model line en­dorses the sta­ble and sus­tain­able growth of the com­pany and sig­ni­fies for us the be­gin­ning of a new era.”

He adds: “The new SUV will be made in San­t’A­gata Bolog­nese, demon­strat­ing our com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing the val­ues of ‘Made in Italy’ world­wide.”

Pro­duc­tion of the new Lam­borgh­ini SUV in San­t’A­gata Bolog­nese will see sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment of the fac­tory site, in­creas­ing from the cur­rent 80,000 square me­ters to an area cov­er­ing ca. 150,000 square me­ters. The pro­ject will in­clude the con­struc­tion of new fa­cil­i­ties, such as a new pro­duc­tion line, ware­hous­ing and en­large­ment of the R&D de­part­ment. The ad­di­tion of a third model line will also pro­vide im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ties for the sup­plier net­work in Italy and in­ter­na­tion­ally, and have a strong im­pact on hu­man re­sources: Lam­borgh­ini in­tends to hire 500 new em­ploy­ees.

Ru­pert Stadler, Chair­man of the Board of Man­age­ment Audi AG states: “Lam­borgh­ini, Italde­sign Giu­giaro and Ducati have de­vel­oped very suc­cess­fully un­der Audi parent­age, and kept their Ital­ian iden­tity. With the de­ci­sion to pro­duce the Lam­borgh­ini SUV in Sant’ Agata Bolog­nese we have proven once more our com­mit­ment to Italy as an im­por­tant au­to­mo­tive in­dus­trial na­tion.”

Luca de Meo, Board Mem­ber for Sales and Mar­ket­ing Audi AG un­der­lines: “Lam­borgh­ini is to­day one of the world’s most ex­clu­sive brands. We at Audi are very proud of all our Ital­ian sub­sidiaries. I am de­lighted at this out­come for both Lam­borgh­ini and Italy, and thank the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment for their col­lab­o­ra­tion in help­ing to make this pos­si­ble.”

A lux­ury SUV sees Lam­borgh­ini chal­leng­ing an un­ex­ploited, fast-grow­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing car seg­ment, and ex­pand­ing its clien­tele sig­nif­i­cantly. These will in­clude Lam­borgh­ini su­per sports car cus­tomers who to date have dri­ven SUV mod­els from other brands, as well as fam­i­lies and cus­tomers new to the Lam­borgh­ini mar­que. Dis­tri­b­u­tion of vol­umes will be well bal­anced among the three ma­jor sales re­gions: EMEA, the Amer­i­cas and Asia Pa­cific. Tar­get mar­kets will be pri­mar­ily the USA, China, the Mid­dle East, United King­dom, Ger­many and Rus­sia. The an­nual vol­umes will be around 3,000 ve­hi­cles and will dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent sales per­for­mance.