Rolls-Royce tends to tune its vehicles and their engines more for comfort than power and performance. But anything with twelve cylinders and two turbochargers under the hood holds a lot of potential in our books. So it’s not hard to imagine the new Cullinan being pushed a little further – whether by the factory or by an aftermarket tuner.
Unfortunately we’ve yet to see such modifications performed on Goodwood’s debut crossover. But this latest rendering from Nikita Aksyonov gives at least one idea of what a more aggressively treated Cullinan could look like – and a pretty good one at that, if you ask us.
Now as it stands, the Cullinan packs quite a punch. 563 horsepower (420 kW) and 627 lb-ft (850 Nm) of torque is, after all, much more than most cars and trucks have to offer. But 6.75 liters of displacement across twelve cylinders with a couple of turbochargers thrown in can surely deliver a good deal more than that, if it were so tuned.
Mercedes and Bentley extract more than that from the same number of pistons and spools with less displacement. And Rolls-Royce is expected to follow with a more potent version of the Cullinan as well (whether it’s adorned with the Black Badge or not). But even if it doesn’t, you can bet there’ll be others who will gladly tinker with the big engine and easily coax more muscle out of it, and add some other go-fast bits to make it look the part, too. Whoever’s performing the enhancements, though, they’d do well to make the big luxurious high-rider look a little something like this.