Well, it was the worst kept secret in the motoring world really, wasn't it? That Rolls-Royce would eventually produce its own-brand SUV. It has a ring of utter inevitability about it, especially since once-time stablemate and now rival Bentley is well on the way to launching its own such car. While the EXP-9 Falcon prototype (which will be unveiled as the Bentyaga production model soon) was pilloried for its sheer ugliness, that didn't stop it picking up a barrel-full of lucrative orders from the Middle-and-Far-East. Rolls clearly took note.
The gears of inevitability meshed ever closer together when BMW announced that it was going to make a super-luxury SUV to sit above the X5 in its range. The putative X7 will share much of its structure with the X5 and be built in the same factory in Alabama, but sharing those same components with another, significantly more expensive model, just makes a wonderful form of financial sense.
This morning's open letter issued by Rolls-Royce Chairman Peter Schwarzenbauer and its Chief Executive Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, is a masterclass in careful ground laying and self-justification. It speaks of creating a car that: "can cross any terrain, a car that meets our customers' highly mobile, contemporary lifestyle expectations, a Rolls-Royce that is as much about the pioneering, adventurous spirit of Charles Rolls as it is about Sir Henry Royce's dedication to engineering and innovation."
All good, reassuring words and rather like Porsche remind us all of its Paris-Dakar successes when it was about to launch the first generation Cayenne, Rolls-Royce harks back ever farther to the days of "taking top honours in rigorous overland adventures such as the Scottish Reliability Trials, the London to Edinburgh event and the Alpine Trials. Rolls-Royces conveyed pioneers and adventurers like Lawrence of Arabia across the vastness of unexplored deserts and over mountain ranges. In other parts of the world including Australia, India and the Americas, Rolls-Royces carried their owners over challenging terrain with absolute reliability and comfort." There is a valid point to be made here - Rolls-Royce cars were once as prized for their ruggedness and ability to survive the harshest conditions as much as they were for their luxury, comfort and performance.
There are other Rolls traditions to be noted, not least the fact the vehicles as varied as armoured cars (including Michael Collins' own Sliabh na mBan) and fire engines have all been based on Rolls-Royce chassis and engines in the past - a practice that pre-dated the original Land Rover by a good twenty years.
It now remains to Rolls-Royce and a team led by Chief Designer Giles Taylor to figure out exactly how such a car should present itself, and this Rolls-Royce seems to be taking some interesting routes. The word coming from within the Goodwood-based factory is that this will not be a traditional big, hefty 4x4 but something rather more along the lines of a super-sized shooting brake with four-wheel drive and some rough-terrain capability. Don't expect it to match a Land Rover Defender in the mud then, but doubtless there will be the potential for some serious ability to be optionally engineered into the car for certain customers. Can you imagine the dune-racing possibilities a 4x4 Rolls opens up to the firm's cash-happy customers in the Middle East?
It will probably keep a V12 engine at first, because Rolls won't want to challenge perceptions too much in one go, but this will also probably become, eventually, the first Rolls-Royce of the BMW era to feature a smaller, probably V8, engine. And a diesel? And a hybrid? Don't be surprised...
It could even become the first Rolls-Royce to be built outside of England. After all, BMW will build the X7 in the US so it would make more than a little sense to build the Rolls on the same production line. Perhaps the British embassy in Washington could pay a visit to the factory to consecrate the ground as official Crown territory, just to keep the traditionalists happy.
This is going to be really interesting. There will be many who will decry the fact that Rolls-Royce is even considering making its own SUV, but these protests will be rather empty, I suspect. Many said that BMW was foolish to build the original X5, or Porsche the first Cayenne, yet both of these turned out to be truly excellent vehicles (albeit rather un-pretty in the case of those early Cayennes).
What Rolls will have to take great care to do is not to make a car that seems confused or apologetic. If it wants to aim for something that is different to the traditional SUV then all well and good, but something along the lines of a BMW X6 or Mercedes GLE would just be all wrong, as would any attempt to make the car look lower and smaller than it really is as a sop to those offended by large, profligate cars.
Actually, Rolls need not look too far for inspiration on how to do this and do it right. After all, in 2002, BMW helped to create one of the great modern cars, a car with imposing yet gently understated styling, a truly sumptuous cabin and a mixture of on-road refinement and off-road ability that far exceeded even the most discerning customers' wishes. It was called the Range Rover...