British super-SUVs edge closer

Up to three all-new British mega-luxury SUVs could join the world's – and Australia's – burgeoning Toorak tractor market by the end of this decade.

Britain created the 'luxury SUV' with the original Range Rover, but the UK-based super-luxury brands of the German car-makers that now dominate the segment appear set to reclaim a large slice of its profits.

Spurred by the massive growth in demand for luxury SUVs globally, Rolls-Royce appears increasingly certain to join the fray, telling Automotive News it will make a final decision this year.

"We've made progress in evaluating options and in understanding better how such a project could work, what's needed to make it work if we decide to go ahead," said Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös.

However, the boss of the BMW-owned British brand said that if it is given the go-ahead, Rolls-Royce's first SUV will not be launched before 2017.

Müller-Ötvös confirmed Rolls will reveal a convertible version of its Wraith, called the Drophead Coupe – sometime this year before going on sale mid-2016, further boosting its expanding sales base.

Rolls-Royce posted a 12 per cent increase in deliveries to 4063 cars last year, breaking the 4000 barrier for the first time in its 111-year history, and says demand for personalised vehicles saw the company sell more "super-luxury" models priced above €200,000 ($A292,000) than any other car-maker in the world.

United States continues to be Rolls-Royce's biggest market, followed by China, the UAE (its top-selling dealer is in Abu Dhabi) and the UK. Just 39 Rollers were sold last year in Australia, nevertheless representing a 144 per cent sales spike on 2013.

Rolls-Royce added six new dealerships in 2014, bringing the total to 127, and says it will add more in 2015.

Bentley, meantime, has already locked in plans to deliver its first SUV and has confirmed it will be revealed this year.

Fear not, however, as the Volkswagen-owned British brand's first SUV will not look like the ungainly EXP 9 F concept first seen at the 2012 Geneva motor show, nor the pre-production prototype dressed in Continental GT bodywork spied in October.

Before it launches worldwide in 2016, Bentley has revealed it's already considering a second, smaller SUV to position beneath the full-size SUV.

Speaking with Autocar, Bentley chairman and CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer said the SUV market is "expanding three times faster than the market as a whole".

Of a smaller SUV, he said "there are other SUVs on the market that show the potential in that area. This derivative is definitely one of the ideas we have, but our store of ideas gets bigger and bigger."

A two-seater sports car is another smaller possible Bentley model Dürheimer has previously spoken of.

The former Porsche R&D chief said previous forecasts of 3000 annual sales for the full-size SUV "could be conservative" since the company already has 4000 serious "expressions of interest" – sight unseen.

Dürheimer told Autocar the "ultra-luxury" SUV is in its final test phase, and showed journalists a video of a W12-engined prototype easily reaching the top of Dubai's notorious Big Red sand dune.

"This will be a very luxurious model, but it will also be very fast and very capable," he said.

Dubbed 'Falcon', it rides on the same new Porsche-developed 'MLB Evo' platform that will underpin Audi's lighter new Q7 and Porsche's next Cayenne.

Like existing Bentleys, it will launch with a 6.0-litre twin-turbo 12-cylinder engine, but should also become available with V8 turbo-diesel and V8 petrol-electric plug-in hybrid powertrains and up to seven seats.

As with Rolls-Royce, Bentley sales are at record levels even without an SUV, with a nine per cent global sales increase last year (to 11,020 cars, 87 per cent of which were exported), bringing its fifth straight year of sales growth in 2014. Bentley sales were up by 11.6 per cent in Australia last year, to 135.

Dürheimer told Autocar he is working towards building 20,000 cars a year at Crewe by 2020 – about double the number it sold in 2013 – and China is eventually expected to overtake the Americas as its largest market.