Lamborghini SUV locked in

After five years, countless planning meetings and impassioned personal pleas, Lamborghini President, Stephan Winklemann, has finally won his battle to build his company's second SUV.

Winkelmann announced to the Italian supercar maker's entire workforce yesterday that it would invest hundreds of millions of euros in an effort to double Lamborghini's volumes.

With Lamborghini selling 2500 cars last year, doubling its volumes with an SUV would still give it half the volume target of arch-nemesis and near-neighbour, Ferrari.

"This is a proud moment for everybody in Lamborghini," Mr Winkelmann said today. "The introduction of a third model line endorses the stable and sustainable growth of the company and signifies for us the beginning of a new era."

Winkelmann has pushed for the third model line for almost a decade in an effort to eradicate Lamborghini's vulnerability to financial crises and model cycle fluctuations.

The new model will be based on the Volkswagen Group's all-new big SUV architecture, which underpins the Porsche Cayenne and Audi's crackingly good all-new Q7.

It will delve into luxury territory when it debuts this year beneath the Bentley Bentayga and into extreme sports territory beneath the Lamborghini SUV.

Winkelmann said he saw the SUV as expanding Lamborghini's clientele significantly, with an even balance between Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe. He said Lamborghini was particularly keen to target the USA, China, the Middle East, the UK, Germany and Russia with the SUV.

There are hints that it may not wear the Urus name into production, though, because the new SUV was referred to as the "new SUV" at the Lamborghini announcement, and never Urus (pictured).

The move means the Lamborghini factory will grow from its current 80,000 square metres to more than 150,000 square metres, while its human resources division is looking to hire at least 500 new people.

"Lamborghini, Italdesign Giugiaro and Ducati have developed very successfully under Audi parentage, and kept their Italian identity," Audi Chairman Rupert Stadler observed.

"With the decision to produce the Lamborghini SUV in Sant'Agata Bolognese we have proven once more our commitment to Italy as an important automotive industrial nation."

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, will see the engines for the SUV come from Gyor, in Hungary, while the chassis will come from Bratislava, in Slovakia.