2022 Aurus Komendant, Russia’s Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV Wannabe, Makes Dynamic Debut

The Aurus Komendant luxury SUV has been spotted again undergoing winter testing in northern Sweden and now we can see it move under its own power for the first time. The camouflage stays the same as two weeks ago when our photographers snapped it being transported on a trailer. [Updated 01/22/2020]

We’ve known for a while that Russian luxury automaker Aurus Motors had bigger plans than just build the Senat S600 sedan and Senat L700 limousine.

The company actually targets an entire lineup of luxury vehicles including an SUV called Komendant and a minivan named Arsenal. While the latter has been seen occasionally in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motorcade, the SUV has only been presented in teaser images and renderings.

That changes now because a camouflaged Komendant (Russian for ‘commandant’) was spotted in Sweden while being transported on a trailer. The truck driver stopped at a petrol station, allowing our photographers to take both exterior and interior shots of the massive SUV.

Watch: Get Up Close And Personal With Russia’s Aurus Senat In Detailed Presentation

As you can see, the disguise is pretty thin and allows us to spot several key design elements of the Aurus Komendant, chief of which are the Rolls-Royce-like grille and the LED headlights. It’s quite hard not to think of the Cullinan when seeing the Komendant from the front.

Unlike Rolls-Royce’s SUV, however, the Aurus model features front-hinged doors for the rear passenger compartment. At the rear, the prototype features provisional taillights but the cutaways do not leave much to the imagination when it comes to the shape of the lamps.

As for the interior, the dashboard appears to be identical with the Senat sedan but that should come as no surprise given that the Komendant uses the same platform and is roughly the same size – except the height, obviously. Expect the SUV to get the same 4.4-liter hybridized V8 engine that produces 590 HP (598 PS) and 649 lb-ft (880 Nm) of torque in the Senat.

While retail sales of the Aurus Senat will begin in 2021, Russian customers will have to wait until 2022 to get their hands on the Komendant. Mind you, Aurus Motors expects to build around 200 vehicles in 2020 but all of them will be for state authorities.