Fast utes are rooted in slow tractors

There is good reason behind Lamborghini’s hankering for muddy fields and it’s all VW Group’s fault.

The Rambo Lambo from 1982

The latest news in the world of super cars show you can take designer out of the tractor factory, but can you never quite wash off all the mud.

It is a little known fact, but the coats worn by Ferruccio Lamborghini and Ferdinand Porsche both sport muddy stains from when they both made tractors.

Porsche made three prototype tractors in 1934, but then went on to very fast cars like the 1939 Mercedes-Benz type 80 land speed car.

Lamborghini never stopped building tractors, but added super cars when he discovered Enzo Ferrari
used the same clutches as he did in his Lambo tractors, and Ferrari refused to make it better.

Since then both the Lambo and Porsche companies have shocked their fans, Lambo by selling out to the Huns and Porsche by giving us the Cayenne — an all-wheel-drive Porsche in the shape of a hatchback on a high-riding chassis.

“Gute Gott, are they mad!?” asked Porsche fans, but sales of the Caynenne and its little boet the Macan to soccer moms around the world has since shown VW’s car marketers are quite astute.

For each motor head wants different, and VW is happy to supply. With Lamborghini part and parcel of this niche-filling strategy, it was always only a matter of time before the Italian super car builder would also announce its SUV, which came in 2012 in the form of the Urus concept.

Lambo boss CEO Stephan Winkelmann at the 2012 Beijing
Auto Show with the Urus concept. 

CEO Stephan Winkelmann said at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday Lamborghini is now ready to start building the Lambo ute, with sales are scheduled to start sometime in 2018.

Winkelman reminded it is not the first 4x4 Lambo — that honour goes to the 1982 “Rambo Lambo” born from a failed attempt to land a government tender with a Hummer-type vehicle.

Winkelman explained Lambo’s ute project got a bit bogged down by red tape as they waited on unions and the Italian government for their buy in.

The Italian government has now bought into the idea and then some, with tax breaks and other incentives worth over 80 million euros. (And you should know tax breaks are where car manufacturers actually make their profits.)

The unions are making happy noises — for now — as Lamborghini will hire around 500 new employees and invest significantly in expanding its facilities.

Pundits expect the 2016 Lambo ute will look a lot the Urus concept.

Under the smooth metal flanks it will, however, have VW’s MLB Evo platform, which already underpins the Audi Q7 and soon also the Bentley’s Bentayga and the next-generations of the Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg.

Time will tell whether the Lambo ute will find as much favour as the Cayenne did. 

The focus market is in the Middle East and China, where the billionaires will soon be spoilt for choice with the (br)ute offerings from Aston Martin DBX and the Maserati Levante.