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Lamborghini is trying to shake off its macho image
(The Lamborghini Urus.Lamborghini)
Luxury car maker Lamborghini is attempting to shake off its macho image in order to target women and families for the first time, Bloomberg reports.
The company's recently appointed chief executive Stefano Domenicali said the brand — with its famous raging bull logo — plans to soften its image with the launch of its new Urus SUV, which is due to roll out in 2018 at a starting price of around $200,000.
Domenicali said: "A bull is always aggressive, but I would like to give us a new philosophy toward the future: A bull can be gentle."
The Volkswagen Group-owned Lamborghini hopes the majority of the new SUV's buyers will be women, but just 5% of its global buyers last year were female — a figure that has stayed at around the same level for more than a decade, according to Bloomberg, which shows how much of a task the automaker has ahead of it.
The Lamborghini Urus SUV has softer edges than signature Lamborghinis and is expected to have a 600-horsepower, turbocharged V8 engine rather than the automaker's signature V12.
Domenicali said: "A bull can recognize people with a glimpse of the eye and be smart. He is not always aggressive in a negative way. He’s aggressive because he is [a] very strong animal, but the Lamborghini of the future is an animal that can recognize the beauty of people, can recognize the fact that we are going to a family-oriented business with an SUV."
Lamborghini expects to at least double production to 7,000 vehicles a year by 2019 once it rolls out its new SUV. The company also plans a plug-in hybrid electric version of the SUV by 2020 and it is considering a zero-emission vehicle.
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