LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR S
Lamborghini’s biggest hitter has upped its game, with more power, four-wheel steering and improved aero. Its got a new name, too – Aventador S – and it might just be the best V12 Lambo ever made
Is this the best V12 Lambo yet?
WHEN THE LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR WAS first unleashed upon us in 2011, the atmosphere among the upper echelons of the world’s fastest cars was considerably less dense than it is now. Back then McLaren Automotive was still in its infancy, the P1 was little more than a speculative rumour amid the news pages of this magazine, and the 918 Spyder and LaFerrari were still in the minds and on the drawing boards of their designers and engineers at Weissach and Modena respectively.
Back then, in fact, the Aventador’s carbon fib re mono co que chassis, its radical push rod suspension and its seven-speed single-clutch gearbox mated to a Haldex four-wheel-drive system were absolutely at the cutting edge. And then a couple of years later the floodgates opened, and the world of fast cars changed forever.
Which left the dear old Aventador looking a wee bit sorry for itself technically. So Lamborghini’s reaction, under the guidance of its ebullient new boss Stefano Domenicali, former F1 team chief at Ferrari, is the car you see here: the Aventador S.
Don’t think of this car as a direct rival to the triumvirate of hypercars from you-know-who, because in reality it is nothing of the sort. For starters, it costs a third of the price of such cars. Second, it remains powered by a tweaked
version of the wondrous 6.5-litre V12 from the original Aventador, with not an electric motor or a turbocharger in sight. And third, it will sell in vastly greater numbers than any of the royal trio did, with no restriction on production numbers, even if there’s already a decent waiting list.
The big news technically is the new electronic fourwheel steering system. But as you can see, there have been numerous design changes as well, including a delightful new treatment around the rear wheelarches that is an unashamed nod to the Countach. Front, back and sides, the car looks quite different from the original in the flesh, even though the fundamental template remains. The way the car flows through the air has changed, too. Thanks in part to a new active electronic rear wing, Lamborghini claims the S develops 130 per cent more downforce than the old car, and that it’s 50 per cent more efficient aerodynamically overall. Which are some claims.
And the development of the S doesn’t stop there. The electronic dampers and suspension have also been comprehensively re-engineered so that they react and respond in accordance with the new four-wheel steering system. There’s also a bespoke new Pirelli tyre, developed because the dynamics of a car with rear steering alter the demands placed on the rubber. And finally, the dynamic drive program that previously featured three modes – Strada, Sport and Corsa – has been re-written to include a fourth setting called Ego.
Forget the narcissistic connotations of the name if you can because, in practice, the Ego setting finally allows the driver to alter the parameters of the steering, powertrain and suspension separately from one another, which is a minor eureka moment for the Aventador. No longer do you have to put up with thump-in-the-back upshifts in Corsa mode just because you want maximum response from the steering and dampers. Take your S to the Nürburgring, for example, and Ego will enable you to select the softest suspension settings (desirable at the Ring) but with the engine, steering and gearbox set to full attack, and so on.
The other key technical change is the fitment of one single ECU to control all the car’s dynamic functions. There are many other smaller ECUs to deal with stuff like the air con, the new TFT instruments, the lights, the electric seats and so forth, but the engine, sevenspeed automated-manual gearbox, steering, ESP, 4WS – everything to do with the fundamental dynamics of the car – are all controlled by a single electronic unit.
What are the advantages of doing this? Lamborghini’s technical overlord, Maurizio Reggiano, says it has enabled his engineers to develop a harmony of response that you simply can’t achieve when separate ECUs control separate dynamic functions. By having one brain control the whole shebang, you get a consistency of reaction to a driver’s inputs that Lamborghini has never been able to achieve before, and that, says Reggiano, is apparent at any speed.
On paper, then, the ‘dramatically improved’ S would appear to represent strangely good value. I know that sounds like a weird conclusion to reach considering the outlay, but think about it for a second, and then consider the raw numbers.
The V12 engine develops a whopping 730bhp at
8400rpm – a rise of 40bhp – and an unchanged 690Nm at 5500rpm, and the car weighs a mere 1575kg dry. Its headline performance statistics might not quite be up there with the fastest hypercars but 0-100kmph is still not far off at 2.9sec, thanks to the car’s launch control and AWD. Neither is 8.8sec to 200kmph, and the top speed of 350kmph means the S is rarely going to get spanked by anything, at any price, on top end.
Plus, of course, there’s the way it sounds, and the Krakatoa-like way in which it responds to the throttle, both of which are unique to the Aventador and specifically its huge atmospheric V12.
Reggiano’s also dead right about the harmonic clarity of the car’s reactions to your inputs. On the move the first thing you notice is how much less steering input is required, how direct this makes the front end feel, and how much more feel, proper feel, there is through the rim.
Then you notice how much cleaner and more consistent the throttle response is. In the old car you’d sometimes get strange bursts of unwanted revs from relatively small doses of throttle, followed by almost no response. But in the S every millimetre of travel on the pedal makes a difference. You instantly feel much more in control of the car as a result. You drive it rather than the other way round, and from this initial realisation flows a more gradual journeying of the penny south, and after a while you realise that at last, at long last, Lamborghini has finally got what this driving thing is all about.
And the key word is ‘detail’. The old car never lacked much when it came to generating headline numbers, neither was it short on pure brute force or noise. From the outside looking in, it seemed to have everything. But from behind the wheel it could be a clumsy car in some respects, with brake-pedal responses that didn’t quite match those of the throttle, steering that always felt detached from the rear axle somehow, and a four-wheel-drive chassis setup that was nothing if not determined in its desire to provide safe but endless amounts of understeer. Fundamentally it felt like a big, heavy car on the move, did the Aventador; bigger and heavier than it actually was. The detail, for whatever reason, was absent. It felt almost as if the engineers were happy to sign everything off at 90 per cent then go home, working on the assumption that the customer would never notice.
With the S, though, they’ve gone all the way and then some, and this is almost certainly a consequence of Domenicali’s famously obsessive approach to detail – his desire to get deep beneath the skin with the engineering and fine-tuning of his cars. To the point where even the engineers admit that he can be somewhat challenging to work for, even though they adore his overall approach.
So, this four-wheel steering system. How does it work and what does it do for the Aventador’s dynamic repertoire? In simple terms, it turns the rear wheels in the opposite direction to the fronts by up to three degrees at low speeds, then at higher speeds it turns them in the same direction as the fronts by up to 1.5 degrees. The switching ‘window’ is 125-185kmph, depending on how much yaw is detected, and the transition is seamless. All you’re aware of is much sharper front-end bite on turn-in,
It’s a genuine track weapon that can be driven – and relished – right up near to the edge without scaring yourself half to death
with maybe a hint of neutral oversteer that never develops into full-blown oversteer. It’s a massive step in the right direction. At high speed the car feels, to all intents and purposes, pretty much glued at both ends, with far less steering input required to get it to turn, plus a lovely sense of control on the throttle mid-corner.
And because the car is so much better balanced under power across all speeds, the engineers were able to send much more torque to the rear axle at any given time. This has the effect of making the S feel like a rear-wheel-drive car most of the time, and a very well set up one at that.
We do lots of laps at the Valencia Moto-GP circuit, in all sorts of conditions. In the soaking wet the car is still a touch understeery, true, but mainly because anything and everything understeers around this strangely greasy-when-wet circuit; as things dry out, the car feels sharper and sweeter with every lap, and then in the bone-dry the Aventador S properly blows me away.
The engine we knew about already. It’s a thing of rare loveliness and its longevity, says Domenicali, is guaranteed for many years yet. In the S it pulls harder in the mid-range and revs a further 150rpm before its limiter intrudes, at 8500rpm. And it sounds even more incredible in this installation, too, if such a thing is possible. Thank the lighter exhaust system for that. We also know about the gearbox, which works OK but not brilliantly compared with the best. The carbon-ceramic brakes, which are excellent in their overall power, now deliver a lot more feel through the pedal, which gives you more confidence.
But the chassis, well, it’s something else. Seemingly out of nowhere, Reggiano and his team have turned their big V12 monster from a wild animal into a genuine track weapon, one that turns in properly, is quite beautifully balanced mid-corner, has mind-boggling traction on the way out of bends and which can be driven – and relished – right up near to the edge without scaring you half to death.
And it’s the harmony of response that Reggiano talks about that lies at the core of the car’s appeal. Everything in the Aventador S works ‘as one’ now, and it feels lighter on its feet and much better sorted as a result. Reggiano’s claim is that the collective effects of the 4WS system, the new suspension software, the aerodynamic improvements, the single ECU and the bespoke Pirelli rubber have shortened the wheelbase of the car – subjectively – by half a metre. Sounds ludicrous if you think about it, but he’s not wrong. I climb out of the S thinking that it feels like a Huracán with a V12. Except, if anything, it feels better than that car, even the rear-drive LP580-2, because it turns in better, feels more neutral everywhere and is more agile. It’s more connected to the bits of your mind and body that are on high alert when driving a car like this quickly.
Oh yes, and on the road it also rides less uncomfortably than before when in Strada, thanks to the revised damping, and it benefits from a smoother-shifting auto setting within the gearbox. And a slightly more intuitive instrument display that alters in design as you scroll up through the various drive modes. It’s just a better supercar. A much better supercar. ⌧