European automakers must be impressed with how durable the aluminum-based Ford F-150 is doing. Rolls-Royce, the legendary British luxury car company, is designing a new vehicle capable of handling any terrain. While they haven’t explicitly used the term SUV, you can kind of see where this is going. Most importantly, Rolls-Royce has already declared that it will have an aluminum body. From MLive.com:
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is building the first SUV in the British luxury automotive company’s 111-year history, though the company is calling the forthcoming vehicle about everything but an SUV.
Company Chairman Peter Schwarzenbauer and CEO Torsten Mueller-Ortvoes said in an open letter Wednesday that the new model will be “a high-bodied car, with an all-new aluminium architecture” and one that “offers the luxury of a Rolls-Royce in a vehicle that can cross any terrain.”
It is not immediately clear when or where the company, a division of BMW Group, plans to give the public a first look at the yet-to-be-named off-roader. But the announcement that it plans to move forward with the new car comes shortly after rival luxury automaker Bentley announced a name for an SUV it too is building: the Bentley Bentayga.
Between the F-150 and Rolls-Royce’s not-quite-SUV vehicle, it’s clear that aluminum can handle even the most rugged of circumstances. And we’re pretty sure that Rolls-Royce won’t have to use buzzwords like Ford’s “military-grade aluminum” to sell this car.