Lamborghini’s 2019 Urus is spacious, tech-laden and feels right at home on a racetrack
Whisper its name: Lamborghini SUV. The words glitter as they roll off the tongue. They sound like money. They send a shiver of delight down the spine of every well-heeled extrovert, every rich kid on foreign exchange.
The Lamborghini SUV is an idea so juicy, so delicious, and so obviously profitable — like Beyoncé at Coachella — it’s a wonder it hasn’t been done sooner. The Urus, as it will be known, represents a change in the scale of Lamborghini’s ambition. The company, which was born in 1963 out of a vendetta against Enzo Ferrari, is no longer content to crank out a few thousand supercars per year.
The factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese in northern Italy has doubled in size to meet projected demand for their SUV.
“It’s a point of no return,” said company CEO Stefano Domenicali.
He expects the SUV will roughly double company sales in 2019, to between 7,600 and 8,000 vehicles annually.
Soon the Urus will spawn a hybrid variant; the traditional V-10 and V-12 supercars will remain un-turbocharged but will become plug-in hybrids, and a fourth Lamborghini model — a 2+2 grand tourer — could follow if all goes well, Domenicali said.
Everything about the Urus is supersized. It’s more than five metres long. It has enormous 23-inch wheels, likely the biggest ever on a production car. It also has the biggest brakes: 10-piston calipers clamping down on 440mm carbon-ceramic discs the size of a beachball.
They’re standard equipment because you need brakes that big when you’ve got 2,197 kilograms of metal given momentum by 650 horsepower.
The price, too, is large: $232,000. Most customers will probably spend at least another $30,000 in optional extras.
You wouldn’t dare drive any other Lamborghini on dirt, but the Urus holds its own for light off-road work. It won’t be able to go everywhere a Range Rover could, but on a soft dirt track with deep ruts, the Lambo bludgeoned its way around convincingly.
It took the abuse in stride, pounding into ditches at high speed, nearly catching air over a crest, kicking up dirt in fullthrottle power slides. If this were your own car, no doubt you’d treat it with more care.
A lever on the dash — not unlike the throttle on a 747 jet — scrolls between driving modes, of which there are six. For offroad we tried Sabbia (sand) and Terra (gravel) modes. The air suspension raises the car, providing 213mm of ground clearance. All-wheel drive with a central Torsen differential and torquevectoring system can send most of the engine’s considerable torque through a single wheel.
No expensive carbon-fibre bodywork was ripped off driving on dirt. No wheels were dented. It did not need to be towed. Any other Lamborghini would have been utterly ruined.
“This is a different kind of Lamborghini for a different kind of customer,” said Domenicali. He repeated a similar line several times throughout the day.
“The point is that it will be an extension of Lamborghini, not a change . . . . It’s not changing the soul. Lamborghini will always have to invest in and be a super sports car brand, no doubt.”
The days when making an SUV would be a controversial move for a company like Lambo are long gone. Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Bentley already make utes, and RollsRoyce, Ferrari and Aston Martin all have one coming before the end of the decade.
The Urus isn’t even Lamborghini’s first SUV; that title belongs to the limited edition LM002 (the “Rambo Lambo”) of 1986.
“You cannot give up that (SUV) market,” Domenicali said. “You have to be in, and you have to be different from the others.”
Some 68 per cent of Urus customers are new to the brand. “It’s incredible; my guess was 50 (per cent),” he said.
The Urus shares key pieces with Volkswagen Group stablemates. The MLB Evo architecture is shared with the Bentley Bentayga and Porsche Cayenne. The interior infotainment screens are borrowed from the Audi A8, albeit with a completely new graphic interface.
The basic engine block is a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V-8 sourced from Porsche, although Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s chief technical officer, said much development work was done in-house. The cylinders heads, cams, turbochargers, pistons, intake and exhaust are all new.
Even though it still drinks plenty of high-octane, the V-8 is significantly more fuel efficient than Lambo’s V-10 and V-12 supercars. The Urus will lower the company’s corporate average fuel economy.
The Vallelunga racetrack on the outskirts of Rome is narrow, tight and technical. A bundle of clever technologies helps the big SUV feel smaller and lighter than it should. Rearwheel steering, active anti-roll bars powered by a 48V system and air suspension all attempt to counteract the laws of physics. Together they keep the Urus flat through corners, giving you confidence to push it faster.
It fires itself out of corners like a cannonball, propelled by 627 lb-ft of torque from just 2,250 rpm. The eight-speed gearbox kicks like a mule on upshifts in “Corsa” (race) mode. Zero-100 km/h takes just 3.6 seconds.
Here’s the inevitable caveat: It handles a racetrack exceptionally well, for an SUV. The steering feels a bit artificial and lacking feedback. Understeer is easy to come by.
Long-time Lamborghini customers may be expecting the Urus to perform in some way like a supercar on the racetrack, but — with the exception of its raw speed — that’s not quite the case, hence Domenicali’s insistence that this is a different kind of Lamborghini.
On the road, however, where the Urus will no doubt spend the majority of its time, it’s genuinely comfortable in “Strada” (street) mode.
Comfortable: That’s another first for Lamborghini. Any undue hardness can be quelled if you opt for smaller, 21-inch wheels. There’s ample room for four or five passengers. You can fit two golf bags in the trunk. The engine isn’t even loud. The rear seats are especially spacious thanks to the huge threemetre wheelbase. Pirelli will sell you a set of winter tires developed specially for the Urus if you want to drive your Lambo all year. It’s well suited to the daily commute or stop-start city driving.
It’s objectively a Very Good Car, but maybe that’s the issue. While it looks every bit as wild as a Lamborghini ought to, it doesn’t quite drive like one unless you’re pushing it to the limit on a track. A bit more drama would be welcome, to make it feel like the lunatic Lambos we know and love. But then, that’s not really the point of the Urus.
This is the Lamborghini SUV. It looks wild, it goes fast and it has that raging-bull crest on the hood. Those facts alone are almost enough to ensure its success and profitability.
Given that 2018’s production run is already sold out, and the number of new customers it’s bringing to the brand, the Urus is exactly what Lamborghini needed it to be.