Sure, it’s easy to bash this lifted Rolls-Royce Wraith 4×4, which has been given a pickup truck conversion via a rendering, for not being reasonable. But, before doing that, one has to wonder: how many of the Rolls-Royce customers who choose the Cullinan over the rest of the range actually use that extra ground clearance of the SUV?
German tuner Prior Design, who is no stranger to Rolls-Royces, albeit without the kind of overlanding take seen here, published these renderings back on April 1st. However, it might all be more than just the specialist’s way to tackle April Fool’s Day, which has become a rather important occasion in the car bubble of the social media realm.
A build this RR truck could easily make sense, which is why we’ll give it a 7/10 in the RPM (Real-world Project in the Making) Potential department.
Before listing our reasons, we’ll quickly go over the transformation of the luxury machine. This is a pre-facelift Wraith, a coupe based on the ex-generation Ghost, the less massive of the two luxury sedans in the Rolls-Royce range.
Starting from the bottom, which is where many of the expensive bits would be found on an actual build of the sort, we find meaty go-anywhere tires wrapped around custom wheels and we’d expect nothing less than high-end suspension components that can help this bad boy jump dunes.
The said wheel/tire setup has mandated widebody fenders, albeit with this being limited to the size required to keep the mud in check, so as not to alter the image of the vehicle too much.
Now, while the utility coupes that were popular between the 1950s and the 1980s mostly used station wagons as a starting point, this Wraith has also been given a bed conversion.
There are quite a few changes here
Speaking of which, the newfound space behind the front seats (not that there are any rear seats left) is adorned with bars providing rollover protection. This hardware matches the side steps and the bull bar up front, while the two-tone finish is something we normally see on RRs, be it from the factory or thanks to aftermarket efforts.
And the sheer mix between the still-present Spirit of Ecstasy and the winch up front is something that will raise eyebrows.
Building a case for a real-world iteration of this oddball Gaydon machine starts with the fact that car-based pickup trucks, a segment that’s been dead in the U.S. for decades, seems to be making a comeback in the aftermarket world, where builders are always looking for ways to captivate the audience.
And, as far as the idea of a Rolls-Royce truck is concerned, we’ve already shown you a 1970s Silver Shadow of the sort, with the retro limousine having even received a dually conversion.
Then again, that involved a Silver Shadow body married to a heavy-duty truck platform, rather than the heavily modified factory effort that is this Wraith 4×4, as Prior Design calls it. And with RR CEO Torsten Mueller-Oetvos having stated that this is the brand with the youngest customer demographic in the BMW Group (Mini included), we’d expect quite a few customers for such a machine.
It’s already been done. Well, sort of…
With the British automaker having stopped accepting orders on a global level for the Wraith and its Dawn big brother last month, following a previous withdrawal from the U.S.—an all-electric Spectre coupe is almost ready to “replace” them—market, these coupes should go up in value on the used vehicle market.
However, if grabbing a crashed one off Copart isn’t your modus operandi, you can always start with a perfectly fine example—that’s precisely why alpine skier and car vlogger Jon Olsson did back in 2017 when he introduced “George”, a Rolls-Royce Wraith that had been given a posh-rugged conversion that stopped short of lifting the thing (you’ll see the enthusiast introducing his now-sold toy in the YouTube clip below).
