No baby Lamborghini SUV despite success of uber Urus

• Lamborghini Urus sold out for at least a year
• Two shifts build 26 Urus SUVs a day
• Seventy per cent of buyers are new to Lamborghini

The automotive industry might be looking at a global slowdown… but someone has forgotten to tell Lamborghini. The Italian supercar maker is running its factory at peak capacity to keep up with demand for its Urus SUV, which has sold even better than expected.

Despite costing more than $390,000 before on-roads, the order books for the four-door, five-seat Urus are already out to the middle of 2020, with more than 25 of the twin-turbo V8-powered SUV already spoken for in Australia.

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“It's been better than expected, even if we knew that it was a game changer,” said the chief commercial officer of Automobili Lamborghini, Federico Foschini. “Since the beginning, we knew that with this kind of car we were starting a new segment that was not existing.

"We want to have 70 per cent of orders from new people to the brand, and 30 per cent of people that are loyal to the brand, and this is exactly what is happening.”

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Foschini (above) acknowledged that the line between supply and demand is a crucial one for a luxury brand to negotiate, noting that the company’s Sant’Agata site – doubled in size to handle Urus production – is running two shifts daily to pump out 26 cars a day.

“We have an order bank that is all around between 10 to 12 months with peaks of 13 to 14 months and the situation will be better,” he explained. “We are carefully managing this; this is one of the most important things… and it is a nice problem to have, no?”

He explained that a luxury brand is created via demand being higher than supply, and that Lamborghini won’t ramp up production simply to meet initial demand.

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“We don't want to inflate the market in order to give all the cars immediately, because their resale value will be completely destroyed,” he said.

“So it's a very sensitive item, and this is the item that, especially here in the [Asia Pacific] region, they have to manage. We will keep collecting orders, but on the other side we need to satisfy the people that want to buy the car.”

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Even though Lamborghini has beaten the likes of Aston Martin and – if the rumours are to be believed, Ferrari – to the punch in the high-performance SUV sector, the storied Italian brand has no interest in producing a smaller, less expensive SUV to slake the thirst of crossover-mad premium car customers.

“To plan another SUV maybe below the Urus like a Porsche Macan is not something that is in discussion,” Foschini said firmly. “This kind of opportunity is not something that we have discussed.”

Foschini is under no illusion that other car makers will join the hi-po SUV set in the near future, but believes that Lamborghini is still in a unique position at present.

“There is nobody that at the end has this kind of concept,” he said. “It's not an ‘almost SUV’, as we call that, or a ‘luxe’ SUV like the [Bentley] Bentayga or the Rolls Royce [Cullinan]. Is a complete different concept and this is something that we stand for.”

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Production line pics - Noelle Faulkner