In the market for an SUV? If you're budget is in the $2 million neighborhood, you may want to consider the Karlmann King, which will keep you about a hundred grand under that budget if you stick to the base price. It's an Italian product, heavily armored and customized, but with a sturdy Ford F-550 chassis underneath – and at $1.9 million, it's the most expensive SUV on the market, as recently reported by CNBC.
The Karlmann King is essentially a rolling luxury lounge, with such Xzibit-worthy features as a coffee machine, champagne flutes, recliners, and a giant TV. Of course, moneyed buyers can also go above and beyond the basic offerings and customize their King to their own specifications – like a client somewhere in Africa whom Karlmann's sales director Michael Nothdurft said loaded up his Karlmann King with so many extra goodies that he ended up paying $3.5 million for it, all told.
One feature that most clients opt to add on is bulletproofing, which comes in at $300,000 being added to the total price, with greater levels of protection priced even higher. That clues you into what the biggest market for SUVs, like the Karlmann King is: Those who don't feel comfortable traveling without plenty of security. But Nothdurft is sure to tell CNBC that it's not just the paranoid and the legitimately threatened who appreciate the King's unusual design:
"This car is the most emotional car that you can see at auto shows…People either hate it or they love it."
Every Karlmann King today is built by hand in the company's factory in Italy, but Karlmann is reportedly aiming to build another in the US sometime in the next several months. And Nothdurft says that there are already 20 buyers in North America in line to get one, while new buyers should expect to wait anywhere from nine to 15 months before delivery.
You, on the other hand, don't have to wait at all to take a look at the Karlmann King thanks to the video below from CNBC:
