The BIG lie behind supercar brands selling out with super SUVs

Lamborghini did it. Ferrari did it. McLaren is about to. So why are supercar companies all making SUVs today? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than money. You’ve probably heard someone say that supercar brands are being forced to build super SUVs, because the profits from those monstrosities help pay for more actual supercars. Porsche is often held up as a prime example; the common wisdom holds that the Cayenne’s launch in 2002 helped save the company from financial ruin and turned it into a powerhouse. But it’s not the whole story. Not even close. It was actually the first Boxster that turned into a massive hit and pulled Porsche back from the brink a full six years before the Cayenne. What the Cayenne did was expand the brand’s horizon and open it up to a huge new pool of buyers. The enormous profits it generated did help fund the development of things like the 918 Spyder, but Porsche made the Cayenne because it needed to change how people saw it, from a niche sports car brand to a mainstream performance one, and if they did it right, growth and money would follow. Now take Lamborghini. After being absorbed by the Volkswagen Group, Lamborghini was doing a brisk business making a few thousand supercars per year, and making good money off of that. But in modern capitalism, it’s not enough to make a steady profit every year. You have to make MORE money every year, because future growth projections are what attracts investors. Not past performance. And the financial tools the market uses to evaluate future growth pretty much ignore the toll it might take on a brand’s legacy. So Lamborghini was tasked with figuring out how to grow, and it wasn’t going to be able to do that by hand-building more supercars. Instead, it came up with the Urus SUV, borrowing a lot of tech and hardware from the VW Group. Lamborghini’s logic was different: we need to grow, and it doesn’t matter how it changes how people see us, because it will work. And it did—overall sales are higher than ever. But because it started with growth as the main goal, not deliberately evolving the brand, the end result fell flat emotionally, and lots of enthusiasts will never accept the Urus as a real Lamborghini. Then you have a case like Ferrari and the Purosangue. Some people will never accept any reason for a Ferrari SUV existing, and that’s ok. But like it or not, the Purosangue feels way more like a Ferrari than the Urus does a Lamborghini, and that’s because Ferrari rejected the idea of needing to appeal to a bigger market and built a lifted Ferrari FF with a giant V12 engine that’s completely unsuitable for off-road driving. Its logic was: if we have to do an SUV, we’re going to do it our way, and if you don’t like it, that’s your problem. Pretty much the same approach its taken to everything it’s ever built. (See: the Luce.) Ultimately, the real reason supercar companies are building SUVs now is because that’s what capitalism demands of them—not because they literally NEED SUVs to survive. And if you can accept that they’re not selling out because they want to, maybe you can start to appreciate the ones who get it right. I still have my doubts about McLaren, though. Produced by → https://www.instagram.com/joeyrassool/ Hosted by → https://www.instagram.com/kylecheromcha/ Previous episode → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26-4oARwfF4 The Drive is the chronicle of car culture. We write stories you actually want to read. → https://www.thedrive.com/ FOLLOW US! Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thedrive/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/thedrive TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrive_official WORK WITH US → [email protected] 0:00 Here's the problem 1:08 Porsche set the stage 4:57 Lambo learns the wrong lessons 8:37 The Ferrari way 11:09 Future of super SUVs