Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
Our digital news editor gets his first taste of a Lamborghini V12
WITHOUT WISHING TO DRAW TOO MUCH attention to the generation gap between myself and other members of evo’s editorial team, when I was young I had a poster of a Lamborghini Murciélago on my bedroom wall. But despite the early noughties being a decade or two later than when most of my colleagues were pinning posters to their own walls, a V12 Lambo was still the dream car, and one that I never would have believed I’d have the chance to drive some 20-odd years later.
And so there I was, standing out in a dark office car park at 7 o’clock on a cold Wednesday night, 10,000 miles away from that childhood bedroom, a key in my hand – and not the key to just any V12 Lamborghini, but the most extreme, violent and aggressive one yet. What was the plan? Drive out to some fast, flowing open roads to acquaint myself with it? Not quite…
The following evening there was an organised rendezvous with Stuart Gallagher, Jethro Bovingdon and Andy Morgan near Canary Wharf for the spectacular night shoot with a Nismo GT-R that you saw in issue 282. This, for me, involved perhaps the most unappealing journey in the British isles: a drive from my base in West London to the East End, at rush hour, in the rain – not exactly the glamorous initiation seven-year-old me would have imagined.
The journey was tense, you might say, a multiplehour crawl through the capital’s endless roadworks, articulated lorries on one side, concrete bollards on the other and a steady stream of mopeds appearing to skim by within millimetres of the SVJ’S spindly side mirrors and £10,970 paintwork. Despite the threats to the car and my blood pressure, we made it without any major hiccups other than some shoddy radio reception and a brief message on the dash warning of overheated catalytic converters.
It’s fair to say my initial impression was one overrun with intimidation, but after a few weeks and more time at the wheel, the intensity of the SVJ’S performance, image and value finally evaporated to reveal, for me, its greatest asset. As a journalist whose exposure to naturally aspirated engines has been in an era of their managed decline, our Lambo’s 6.5-litre V12 is quite simply the most intense and exciting thing I’ve ever experienced. I don’t refer to its volume, although there’s plenty of that, rather its response, texture, and the uncorrupted link between 6498cc of swept capacity, 12 pistons and my right foot.
It doesn’t feel like ‘just’ an engine; it’s a mechanical Mona Lisa. Yes there are other artfully designed, highly strung V12s, and yes I know this is possibly not the greatest of them all, but for a moment of time this one was mine. A chance for me to experience one of man’s greatest engineering achievements in real time, and to my own beat.
The experience will forever reside in my memory bank, no doubt to become that irritating ‘Have I told you about the time I ran an SVJ for a few weeks?’ story I share with my kids one day when I’m older. Seven-year-old me would be thrilled beyond measure, but also disappointed that this type of engineering is undeniably closing in on its expiry date.
Jordan Katsianis (@Jordankatsianis)
Date acquired November 2020 Total mileage 9859 Mileage this month 701 Costs this month £0 mpg this month 9.0