Chris Harris Drives the Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Finds a Major Flaw
One major characteristic keeps Rolls-Royce’s first SUV from shining its brightest.
Rolls-Royce designed and engineered the Cullinan to be the ultimate luxury SUV, the Rolls-Royce of SUVs, literally. That means they had to make it stately, powerful, composed on- and off-road, and ultra luxurious inside. As this review from Top Gear shows, they succeeded in doing that, but, in host Chris Harris’s opinion, they forgot one key facet.
Harris admits vehicles like the Cullinan are not his favorite. He prefers estate cars (aka wagons) to SUVs because they’re lower to the ground and less flashy. However, he tries his best to remain objective. The Cullinan gives him plenty of things to like. Even while driving off-road, Harris raves about how supple the ride quality is. Engineers stuffed pounds and pounds of sound insulation into the Cullinan, making it as quiet as it is comfortable.
That serenity adds serious pounds, though. The Cullinan tips the scales with nearly three tons of curb weight. Getting that much vehicle up to speed requires a lot of power. Luckily, the Cullinan has it. Its twin-turbo 6.75-liter V12 cranks out 563 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque. That’s enough to make the Cullinan accelerate with a quickness that stuns Harris and makes him exclaim, “By Hell, it goes.” In fact, he’s glad the Cullinan is not more powerful than it is because that would mean having to bring the uber-SUV’s substantial weight to a stop from even higher speeds.
The steering and handling are two more reminders of just how massive the Cullinan is. Harris says, “It just starts to understeer. It’s a bit like the Phantom in that respect. It lulls you into thinking it’s hidden all that mass and the moment at which it goes, ‘Eh, actually, I was tricking you,’ you’re in trouble.”
Harris finds the interior to be a mixed bag of features. Designers sacrificed room in the rear cargo hold to make the second row of seats more spacious.
Interior materials are a step above those used in the Bentley Bentayga, but the layout of certain things, particularly the heating/ventilation and massage controls for the front seats, leaves Harris baffled. On the other hand, the button that operates the power-closing driver’s door is in the right spot.
Harris largely enjoys his time in the Cullinan. It’s luxurious, quiet, and comfortable. That ties into Harris’s biggest gripe about the Cullinan: its exterior design. He doesn’t want to get out of it, partly because that means he would have to look at it. The rear three-quarter angle is appealing, but the front is unsightly to him. He sums up his feelings about it by saying, “If you can deal with the looks, this is a great car. If you can’t, like me, get a Phantom. And if not … buy an estate car.”
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