Rolls-Royce Cullinan vs Audi Q5

What's the difference?

The truly great thing about great wealth - I mean like, drop $1 million on a new Rolls-Royce with a casual yawn and a mouse click wealth - would be how great it is not having to do anything for yourself.

Personally, I would hire a chef, so I’d never have to cook again, and a pilot to fly my private jet, so I’d never have to catch pneumonia while flying 34 hours to Ibiza with strangers to do my weird job (oh, and if I was rich I wouldn’t have to work anyway), and in theory I might even hire a chauffeur for those odd times when I didn’t want to drive myself in one of my fleet of beautiful cars. 

All right, so I can’t even imagine that last one, but the most interesting fact I gleaned while in Spain, tirelessly testing the new Rolls-Royce Cullinan Series II, is that even the ridiculously rich are falling out of love with not driving these days.

Perhaps, being tech-savvy types, they can see the end of driving and the rise of autonomy coming and they want to make the most of it while they still can. But according to Rolls, the percentage of its buyers who sit in the back rather than in the driver’s seat has flipped entirely over the past 15 years.

Back in the day, 80 per cent of Rolls owners were back-seat passengers, blowing cigar smoke at the back of a chauffeur’s head, while 20 per cent actually drove their expensive motors.

Today, the number who drive themselves has soared to 80 per cent, and apparently that’s not just because it would feel weird being chauffeured around in what is now the most popular Rolls-Royce by far - the Cullinan SUV.

The other big change, apparently, is that the average age of a Rolls-Royce buyer has also dropped, from 56 to the low 40s. And that means more buyers with kids, and gold-plated prams and other associated dross, which means they need bigger Rolls-Royces, family-sized SUV ones, which again helps to explain why the Cullinan now makes up as much as half of all the brand’s sales in some markets.

And why the arrival of this, the facelifted, tweaked and twirled Series II version of a car that was greeted cynically by many in the media when it arrived (“one group was not sceptical, and that was our clients,” as a Rolls spokeswoman delightedly pointed out) is such a big deal.

Audi’s latest Q5 Sportback brings mild-hybrid power, updated underpinnings, more technology and a genuinely impressive interior glow-up. 

It’s clearly aimed at buyers drawn to a more athletic take on the mid-size SUV, where style plays a bigger role than outright practicality. We're testing the base petrol spec to see how it sits alongside the BMW X4 xDrive20i, Genesis GV70 2.5T and Mercedes-Benz GLC300 Coupe.