Lamborghini SUV is go

Lamborghini has scheduled a press conference in Rome Wednesday to finally announce it will build its second SUV.

The long-awaited announcement should bring to an end the on-again, off-again, on-again saga of the Urus concept car, which Lamborghini President Stephan Winkelmann has pushed unwaveringly for years.

The brand has booked up the Italian press for a conference in Italy's capital and the guest list includes Winklemann, Audi CEO Rupert Stadler and Italian Premier, Matteo Renzi.

Based around the Urus concept car, which debuted in 2012, the new Lamborghini SUV will be underpinned by the same architecture that is receiving rave reviews beneath Audi's all-new Q7.

That same architecture will also sit beneath Bentley's oddly named Bentayga, which will make its production debut later this year.

Winklemann has been pushing for new model lines in the form of the four-door Estoque super sports sedan and then the Urus.

The new SUV will be built in Italy, sources confirmed, and the Italian Government is expected to provide €80 million in grants and tax breaks to allow Lamborghini to expand its Sant'Agata production facility.

The company would need to employ around 500 new people to build the volumes expected of the fast SUV, especially with the sales punch it's expected to deliver into China.

Winkelmann has previously claimed the SUV would deliver Lamborghini 3000 new customers a year, which would more than double the annual volumes it achieves from its two dedicated mid-engined sports cars. Last year, Lamborghini sales rose 19 per cent to just over 2500 cars.

While the SUV will be assembled at Lamborghini's factory, near Bologna, most of the subsets and core components will be manufactured in Volkswagen Group plants around Europe.

The same procedure it uses to make the Huracan sports car, it will see the engines come from Gyor, in Hungary, while the chassis will come from Bratislava, in Slovakia.

Some form of electrification is almost certain to boost the low-end performance of the engine, itself likely to be biturbo 4.0-litre V8 sourced from the Volkswagen Group.

It won't be the same level of shock for Lamborghini to offer an SUV as it was for Porsche or Bentley. Lamborghini has done this before, selling the V12, mid-engined LM002 until 1993.