There is a curious tension that plays out every year on the lawns of Goodwood. Among the murmurs of heritage, horsepower, and hand-stitched grandeur, one can often find a restless whisper of reinvention. This year, that whisper came from an unexpected corner: Urban Automotive’s reimagining of the Rolls-Royce Cullinan.
It arrived not with the fanfare of a corporate launch but rather with the ease of a magician removing a silk veil. At the centre of Urban’s most ambitious display to date, the newly redefined Cullinan Series II stood silently, like a heavyweight fighter in bespoke tailoring. The man pulling off the cover was Simon Dearn, founder of Urban Automotive, and the crowd knew they were not just looking at a modified Rolls-Royce. They were looking at a provocation.
The Rolls-Royce Cullinan, in its factory form, is already a masterclass in imperious calm. What Urban has done is not a radical act of defiance, but something more calculated, a quiet reshaping of the narrative. The addition of carbon fibre wheel arches and 24-inch forged alloy wheels brings with it a streetwise composure. The kind that suggests the car might feel as at home in Knightsbridge as it would cresting a gravelled estate road.
And yet, there’s a sincerity to this overhaul. Urban’s treatment does not seek to overshadow the Cullinan’s original character but rather cast it under a different light. There are spoilers now, front and rear, all in exposed carbon fibre. The bonnet is new, the bumpers are new, and the stance is undeniably more assertive. It doesn’t roar for attention. It simply demands it with a raised brow.
Goodwood, it must be said, is not easily impressed. This is a place where 200-mile-an-hour Le Mans legends are driven in anger up Lord March’s driveway. Against that backdrop, Urban’s reinterpretation is not a spectacle of speed but of statement. A Rolls-Royce is traditionally not altered. It is revered. To touch it requires nerve, and no small amount of taste.
Dearn is clearly aware of the risk. “We felt the Series II model needed a more aggressive look,” he remarked. That aggression is not the adolescent kind that floods certain corners of the aftermarket. It is more akin to tailoring a Savile Row suit with a sharper lapel and a slightly narrower waist. There is muscle beneath the refinement, but it is suggested, not shouted.
Urban’s upgrades are extensive, over 40 new components—but they are not gimmicks. The vertical daytime running lights, for example, slot into place with almost architectural precision. The colour-coded trim, the anodised aluminium exhaust finishers, the carbon-fibre diffuser, they read less like accessories and more like intentional chapters in a larger story.
The result is a Cullinan that feels less like a product of industrial luxury and more like a personal commission. For some, this will be heresy. For others, especially a younger generation of buyers raised on personalisation and performance, it is precisely what they’ve been waiting for. Not a rejection of tradition, but an evolution of it.
In many ways, this version of the Cullinan is not trying to win over everyone. And that might be its greatest strength. It exists comfortably on the fringe of the Rolls-Royce canon, nodding respectfully at the past while stepping firmly into the present.
At Goodwood, amidst the gravel spit and champagne flutes, the Urban Cullinan was more than a new car. It was a reminder that even the most venerable names in motoring are not immune to reinterpretation. In the right hands, even a Rolls-Royce can be convinced to take a walk on the wild side. Quietly, of course. Always quietly.
