Frankfurt Motor Show: High and mighty luxury SUVs

IF there's a yawning gap in the market just waiting to be filled, it's for a super-luxury, super-expensive sports utility vehicle.

Maserati Kubang

IF there's a yawning gap in the market just waiting to be filled, it's for a super-luxury, super-expensive sports utility vehicle.

For the buyer who simply must spend squillions, there are plenty of sports cars and sedans that will set you back $500,000 or more.

But SUVs top out with the most expensive Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover Vogue at a mere $250,000-ish.

That doesn't do the job for someone with Ferrari money.

Land Rover has spotted this opportunity and will pitch the Vogue higher when the next generation launches next year. It has seen how buyers in the Middle East and Russia exhaust its personalisation options and still want more.

At the Frankfurt motor show it unveiled two early studies for a reborn Defender, the brand's venerable workhorse. Unlike the outgoing Defender, these concepts are packed with innovative ideas previously unseen in SUVs. These include Wade Aid, which uses sonar sensors to measure water depth then automatically adjusts ride height, closes body vents and so on. And I can't wait to try the driver-deployable spiked tyre system for snow and ice.

These may well be offered on the Defender when it arrives in 2015, but they are likely to appear before that in the new Range Rover next year.

In effect, Land Rover is putting down a marker.

Impatience to be first with an SUV-with-the-lot is almost palpable. Aston Martin has floated the idea and Bentley has admitted it is working on one. But both may be beaten by Maserati, which has tyre tracks in this direction already. Its Frankfurt concept revives a name, Kubang, which first badged a car shown in 2003.

Maserati is part of the Fiat group, like Ferrari, and its job is to make large coupes, sedans and convertibles that approach Ferraris on price. A luxury SUV is natural territory, it says.

This time, thanks to Fiat's control of the Chrysler group, it has ready-made engineering for the task. The Kubang will be a close relative of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Chrysler group product that has just gone on sale.

Worried your Kubang won't be special enough? Underneath the Grand Cherokee all the hard work was done by Mercedes, before the DaimlerChrysler "partnership" was dissolved.

As with other Maseratis, the engines will be supplied by Ferrari and the transmission will be an eight-speed automatic.

The interior will be a feast of Italian leather and the huge Frankfurt show car leaves little doubt it will have a commanding road presence, even if the design divides opinion.

So the race to make a top-end off-roader is finally on, but the elite brands have been so tardy an interloper has got there first.

The car industry isn't replete with start-ups but a bunch of international investors spotted this chance going begging and have launched a new brand, Eterniti.

Describing itself as a boutique marque, it will take a Volkswagen Touareg, then pimp it to the max with a 4.8-litre turbo V8 engine and limousine trimmings. Its car, the Hemera, will target Asian markets and production begins in London (that hub of the auto industry) next year. Prices will start about pound stg. 150,000 ($230,000).