Rolls-Royce Cullinan Drags Brabus G 63, Super-Rare Lambo Urus, and an EV Still Wins

Sport Utility Vehicles used to be off-road automobiles with a tingle of fun (read ‘less boring parts’ stuffed under their enormous bellies), so they could be used for something else other than hauling tools and hardware and going to where no tarmac has ventured before it.

Slowly but toxically, SUVs have crept their way up the automotive social hierarchy, and today, most brands have at least one beef-up absurdity that serves no purpose other than to brag about the drivers/owner’s/occupants’ status (and take up significant portions of the road).

Not only that, but in tune with today's trends, SUVs now have obscenely powerful engines and are more at home on a drag strip than their ancestors were over hills, dales, and dusty trails. With the notable exception of Bugatti (for now), almost every major name in the high-speed business has one or more SUVs in their brochures.

Even full-blown thoroughbred SUVs have long lost their ancestral ways of life and are now running with track athletes (here’s looking at you, Range Rover). The trend is so powerful that it trapped even honest-to-piston pickup trucks, like the Ford F-150 (much obliged, Shelby American!), but at least they don’t go around pretending to be luxury cars.

However, there are luxury cars that now self-identify as SUVs and high-performance automobiles at the same time. I have three examples: a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, a Mercedes-AMG G 63, and a super-rare Lamborghini Urus. Care to guess what their favorite pastime is? That’s right – drag racing for the chance to go head-to-head against a Hyundai in a quarter-mile muscle-flexing contest.

Where does this event happen, you might ask? Well, it’s in the dead of winter in one of the most inhospitable places on Planet Piston – Australia. In Wyalkatchem (a tiny town in the central Wheatbelt region, 192 kilometers (119 mi) east-north-east of Perth), where Hyundai sponsored an extensive series of drag races to showcase the prowess of their Ioniq 5N all-electric car. This round, it’s SUV game time, and here's what the merry lads from CarExpert have cooked up.

A Rolls-Royce Cullinan (with Mansory touchups), a Brabus-prepped Mercedes-AMG G 63, and a Lamborghini Urus Essenza SCV12 (one of just 40 ever built) duke it out in the Aussie desert. The rules of engagement are ‘the winner sits, the loser walks out.’ First up, it’s the overweight, overpurple, over-the-top Cullinan. 2.7 tons of (tasteless) luxury powered by a 591-hp, 664 lb-ft V12 displacing six-and-three-quarters-of-a-litre (600 PS, 900 Nm).

The snobbish whale is against the Brabus G 63 –a jacked-up derivative of the already nasty Mercedes-AMG G 63. The car in the video sports a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 that fires up 789 hp and 738 lb-ft (800 PS, 1,000 Nm), a massive leap from the base 577-hp, 627-lb-ft of the AMG G 63 (585 PS, 850 Nm). It may not look like it, but the Brabus is also a beefy chunk of metal, weighing just over 2.6 tons.

The two run in round one, and the Brabus simply walks away from the posh Rolls, finishing the quarter-mile in 12.59 seconds (over the Mansory-ized Cullinan’s best of 13.29). Seven-tenths is enormous when 1,400 horsepower is the norm, but the Rolls-Royce wasn’t all that sluggish, crossing the line at 108 mph (174 kph), just a little slower than the G 63’s 110 mph trap speed (177 kph). The Brabus goes on to the next round.

The Lamborghini Urus Performante Essenza SCV12 is a downright unicorn reserved solely for the use and abuse of one of the 40 owners of an Essenza SCV12 (the ‘SC’ stands for Squadra Corse – Race Team in Italian, and the V12 is self-explanatory – and it has 819 hp / 830 PS on tap).

The associated Urus can only be bought by one of the owners of the track-only missile. This particular example has only 90 miles (150 km) on the clock, so the launch control isn’t active yet. It still leaves the G 63 in the dust, thanks to its superior power-to-weight ratio (305 bhp/ton on the Lambo versus 224 bhp/ton on the Brabus).

Acclaimed as the high-performance version of Lamborghini’s Super SUV, the 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 spits out 657 hp (666 PS) of power and 627 lb-t (850 Nm) of maximum torque. Although it’s not yet at the top of its game, the Raging Bull Super SUV can still score a 12.43-second sprint with a trap speed of 113 mph (182 kph).

The manufacturer claims a 0-62 mph time of just 3.3 seconds, but the Australian test revealed a 4.48-sec 0-100 kph (62 mph) without any help from Launch Control. I don’t mean to upset any die-hard fanatics of internal combustion, but the rowdy Lamborghini is small fries for the electric Hyundai and its all-wheel drive 641-hp, 568 lb-ft (650 PS, 770 Nm) peak output.

The Hyundai gets the 440-yard job done in 11.32 seconds at 121.73 mph (195.92 kph). No matter how impressive the power of internal combustion, electricity is always quicker – and faster – than fire.