A $1 Million SUV Once Seemed Impossible. Now It Seems Inevitable.

The most expensive production SUV in the world, currently, is the Rolls-Royce Black Badge Cullinan, which starts at $472,750, give or take a few grand. The second-most expensive is the Ferrari Purosangue, which is in the neighborhood of $435,000. Third is a Bentley Bentayga Mulliner Extended Wheelbase, which is $340,000.

None of these are even close to cresting $1 million, but whispered among some car executives is a wondering about which SUV, eventually, will. It’s seen as inevitable, and not just because of inflation, but because, symbolically, a $1 million SUV is its own marketing. A $1 million SUV must be worth $1 million because it’s been priced at $1 million, and if it’s priced at $1 million, then it might even be worth $1 million, at least to buyers, or so goes one classic tautology of luxury.

The resistance comes in a couple of forms, the first being that the 40 most expensive cars in the world exclusively have two doors, and all of them are supercars or hypercars. The other resistance comes in the fact that SUVs are still seen as tools for family rearing, off-roading, towing, people-moving, or some other practicality, much like they have been for decades. The wealthiest buyers don’t want their biggest automotive purchase to be practical; instead it’s almost always the opposite.

SUVs, for all their power these days, are also still not seen as performance cars. That expains in part why Ferrari was so reluctant to make one, finally relenting with the Purosangue, which was the most polarizing car of 2022 and is still upsetting people to this day. Lamborghini had no such compunction, introducing the Urus in 2017 and provoking a response that was mainly: Of course Lamborghini did, given the marque’s history with the LM002 but also Lamborghini’s status as the supercar brand that might try anything once.

Now the Urus is Lamborghini’s best seller, and, following a similar playbook, Aston Martin launched the DBX in 2020, with a more powerful version called the DBX707 coming not long after. That car makes 707 metric horsepower, as its name suggests. That car is also near front of the pack among the so-called “super SUVs,” which include the Purosangue, Urus, and Bentley’s Bentayga, the Speed version of which makes 650 metric horsepower.

Those cars are also all approaching (and, many say, surpassing) the upper limits of taste and reason, since race trucks have more power, but not much more. The super SUVs are also the likeliest contenders for those to pass the $1 million mark, and it was an Aston Martin executive who first floated the idea to me once a couple years ago, showing, if nothing else, where its head is at.

It’s not just Aston: McLaren is developing its first SUV, too, supposedly for 2028, which will immediately join the ranks of the super SUV class and will be priced accordingly, possibly even with a number more than half-a-million dollars. More likely still to pass $1 million is an all-electric super SUV from a legacy manufacturer that can claim to be ultra-luxury, as powerful as a god, bespoke, and technologically groundbreaking, which is how Cadillac is trying to sell its new liftback sedan, the $360,000 Celestiq.

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The $1 million SUV is coming, in other words, maybe within a decade, a situation that would be unfathomable to Car & Driver editors in 1987, when the magazine reviewed the Land Rover Range Rover, which was new to the U.S. that year and the top of the market for an expensive SUV. That car cost an astounding $30,000 in America then, or about $90,000 in today’s money adjusted for inflation, a number not so astounding for its size but for the value proposition: Why pay luxury-car money for a glorified dune buggy?

“Even at 70 mph over unpaved roads, it had a remarkably smooth ride, more like a Cadillac than a dirt donk,” C&D wrote, convincing itself that an expensive luxury SUV could be a good thing. For the past 40 years, the world’s been doing the same thing, with ever-increasing prices.