ITALIAN MARQUE BOWS TO EGO WITH SUPERCAR
AWD Lamborghini Aventador S is powerful, composed and engaging, writes David Booth.
Go ahead. Admit it. What’s the first thought that pops into your head when some flashy supercar speeds by you, pastel paint gleaming, V-12 warbling its attention-seeking siren, so those hard of hearing are equally aware of the “superiority” of the driver? What you’re really thinking, in your heart of hearts, relates directly to a part of the human anatomy that seldom sees the sun.
The word “ego” is seldom far removed from the discussion, and almost never meant as a compliment. Normally, this would not be an association one would want to promote. Before Lamborghini took the wrappers off its new Aventador S, purveyors of your modern supercar strived mightily to distance themselves from the narcissists that probably make up the lion’s share of their owners list. Rampant egotism was simply not something you advertised. Until now. Along with the Aventador S’s addition of 40 horsepower to the LP700-4’s 700 hp and the grafting of four-wheel steering comes Lamborghini’s call for prospective customers to “Dare Your Ego.”
“Those who speak of ego like a disorder, a mistake, have never cultivated their own,” claims the Aventador S’s promotion campaign. And, of course, there’s the sell job, essentially noting that when your ego meets that of Lamborghini’s, “you will find the most powerful version of both.”
It’s a brave — and, from my perspective, effective — confrontation of a commonly held belief. It’s also an assertion no new Lamborghini owner will ever forget, mainly because there’s an EGO — Lamborghini’s capitalization — button front and centre in every Aventador S’s centre console.
The EGO button is an addition to the Strada, Sport and Corsa already present in the Aventador’s driving-mode selector. Essentially, what EGO does is allow you to customize powertrain, suspension and steering response — choosing between pretty fast, faster still and ohmy-dear-sweet-loving-Jesus — according to your preference.
Ironically — or, for anyone who is unlucky enough to have to endure such egos, not so ironically — the S’s EGO mode is the least useful addition to new the Aventador’s technological brief. Part of that may be that the three existing modes handle things so well.
Strada is safety and comfort mode. Sport, which distributes 90 per cent of the big V-12’s 740 hp to the rear wheels, is your hooligan mode, optimized to let you drift those phat 355/30R19 rear Pirellis into molten gumballs. Corsa, meanwhile, may push only 80 per cent of the V-12’s maximum 509 pound-feet of torque rearward, but is nonetheless optimized for maximum speed (if slightly less drama). Quite what EGO adds to the occasion, I don’t know.
Much more useful is Lamborghini’s all-new Rear-wheel Steering (LRS) system. Like other such systems used by other manufacturers, the LRS system steers the rear wheels in conjunction with the fronts, at low speeds in a opposite direction to the fronts (think rear-steering forklift here) while at high speeds, in the same direction. Below about 120 km/h, the opposite steering is supposed to add to the Aventador’s agility; above 120, steering the rears in the same direction as the fronts offers greater stability.
What makes Lamborghini’s high-techery unique, says Maurizio Reggiani, the company’s head of research and development, is that it is programmed solely for performance. For one thing, LRS is operational all the way from walking speeds to the S’s 350 km/h top speed. More importantly, says Reggiani, rotating the rear tires up to 3.0 degrees opposite the fronts reduces the Aventador’s “virtual” wheelbase by some 500 millimetres, while steering them in the sympathetic direction 1.5 degrees at high speeds is akin to lengthening the Lambo’s wheelbase, again “virtually,” by an even more substantial 700 mm.
Having a variable “virtual” wheelbase makes the Aventador S the most versatile of supercars, combining, say, the excitement of McLaren’s P1 and the composure of Porsche’s 918. And the Aventador has something neither of those much more expensive “hypercars” can’t emulate: a snarling, impatient and oh-so-sonorous V-12. In the Aventador’s case, it’s a great honking 6.2-L engine pumping out 740 hp, revving to 8,500 r.p.m. (250 more than the previous edition) and capable of scooting the 1,575-kilogram S to 100 km/h in just 2.8 seconds ( just a 10th of a second shy of McLaren’s P1, by the way).
Even those impressive numbers fail to do the big V-12 justice. Angrier than ever, the roar of Lambo’s engine at 8,000 r.p.m. — and the mad, cackling backfire when you back off — is the reason diehard gearheads lament the turbocharged revolution, no matter how much horsepower it promises.
In the end, Reggiani’s ultimate goal in updating the Aventador to S status was to make a mere supercar (yes, these days anything with an MSRP of “just” $463,775 is considered merely super) that can challenge the hypercars of Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari, all at a million smackeroos or more. Considering that the new Aventador S is more composed than the P1, more engaging than the 918 and its engine as enticing as the LaFerrari, I’d say that’s one seemingly impossible mission accomplished.
And you don’t need to be a rampant egotist to appreciate that.