Lamborghini Urus
Will long-term exposure give us a crush on this bright orange Italian super-suv?
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THEN YOU ARE almost certainly a car enthusiast, so it’s reasonable to assume that all cars of all kinds are on your radar, even ones that are powered by ruddy electricity, correct?
Some cars will inevitably appeal to you more than others, and generally speaking the quicker and more exciting a car is, the more interested in it you are likely to be. But being a car nut means that no cars are off-limits for you completely.
If so, how do you feel about the 641bhp, 189mph, £160k (£215,170 as tested) Lamborghini Urus, a pearlescent orange example of which has just landed on the evo Fast Fleet? Does the prospect of us tooling around in one of these leviathans of ostentation for a few months make you ache with envy, or does it make you think ‘Oh dear. They’ve finally lost the plot on that magazine’?
It’s certainly a difficult one to get your head round, the Urus, because on paper it really is one heck of beast. Its twin-turbo 4-litre V8 is an absolute monster of an engine that emits a variety of sounds that, in Corsa mode, are delicious enough to make any rev-head go weak at the knees. And in a straight line it is quick with a capital F. It’s also four-wheel drive and has a clever four-wheel-steering system, while its 23-inch wheels and tyres lend it not only a staggering level of sheer grip but also a stance that is deeply and sometimes quite impressively menacing, no matter how unacceptable you might find the idea of this.
Aim it at the right kind of road and the Urus is a car that cannot help but dominate your attention.
It is an unfathomably complex piece of engineering that, on occasions, appears to be capable of defying the laws of physics in the way it can bend the shapes and spaces that appear in its windscreen. But on the other hand, it is the absolute antithesis of what a great driver’s car is all about. It’s too big, it weighs too much, it has far too much power and torque for its own good and it occupies way more road space than it has any right to given that it has just four seats. The mere idea of such a large, potent and unceasingly brash SUV is therefore not one that many folks on this magazine are ever likely to empathise with. Despise perhaps, yes, but warm to? I suspect not.
And yet… there have been times when I’ve been open-jaw astonished by what this thing – because it is A Thing – can do. The way its engine and eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox combine to propel you towards the horizon if you select Corsa mode then stick it in manual is, I have to admit, a genuinely incredible event to experience. You don’t tend to forget how surreal it feels, either, being at the controls of a 2.2-ton SUV that can get from zero to 100mph in around seven seconds, no matter how many times you do it or, indeed, how appalling the ride quality is in the process.
The attention a bright orange Urus draws wherever it goes is also not to be dismissed lightly, even if much of that attention is one of disgust. However, when the adoration arrives, it is unequivocal. I watched two grown men drop to their knees and do the full Wayne’s World ‘We’re not worthy!’ routine while I was waiting at a traffic light in it. And then five minutes later I got a slow wrist-wipe from someone else who was rather less than impressed by it as I rumbled past, pretending desperately not to care.
And that’s the thing about the Urus. It’s a car that splits opinion not so much down the middle but instead into polar opposites. Those who like it, love it. And those who don’t, hate it, alongside everything else they believe it stands for.
Me? I’m just a simple car enthusiast, so what do I know? But for the record, I really was quite glad to see the enormous back end of this car after a month and 800 or so miles in it. I don’t much care for high-performance SUVS in the first place, and besides, vehicles like this just don’t fit into my lifestyle given that I live in a city. When you keep having to explain to people that it’s not yours, isn’t as much fun to drive as it looks and quaffs fuel at 10mpg or less for much of the time, you know it’s time to hand the key on to someone else. And to admit that the relationship is over. Not that it ever really began.
Date acquired December 2021 Total mileage 5279 Mileage this month 841 Costs this month £0 mpg this month 17.0
‘The way it propels you towards the horizon is, I have to admit, a genuinely incredible event to experience’