LAMBORGHINI ESSENZA SCV12
It costs £2.2m, just 40 will be made and it’s strictly for track use only. Steve Sutcliffe drives Lamborghini’s most extreme V12 creation to date
What would Lamborghini’s Aventador be like if freed from the need to be road legal? The new 819bhp, £2.2million Essenza SCV12 track car holds the answer – and we’ve driven it
IT’S A TRACK-ONLY CAR THAT’S BASED LOOSELY on the Aventador and there will only ever be 40 made, each costing 2.2million euros before local taxes. So it’s a serious toy for the seriously rich, although, says Lamborghini, it will never compete, despite having been granted full FIA approval to do just that.
Think of it instead as Sant’agata’s answer to Ferrari’s XX programme, whereby the factory designs and develops the craziest, most expensive hypercars imaginable then sells them to their wealthiest customers, the ones who crave the ultimate exclusive experience on four wheels but don’t necessarily want to go racing to achieve it. And while Ferrari may have pioneered this concept some 16 years ago with the Enzo-based FXX, Lamborghini is now unashamedly replicating the idea, enlisting the services of one Emanuele Pirro – five times Le Mans winner with Audi Sport and all-round racing car legend – to help them do it.
Pirro is effectively the boss of the Essenza program, with the 819bhp SCV12 being the first example of an entirely new line in ultra-fast versions of already brisk hypercars that will be limited in numbers and which will be run by the factory, also just like the Ferrari XX cars. To help him build it, he assembled a team of core people from within Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse racing department – hence the SC in the name – and three years and one global pandemic later, the SCV12 is what they came up with. Quite some piece of work it is, too.
At its core sits an Aventador’s carbonfibre tub, but extensively modified to accommodate a 6.5-litre V12 that’s been rotated through 180 degrees so that the new six-speed X-trac sequential gearbox sits behind it, rather than in front as per the road car, becoming a fully stressed member in the process. The engine itself is similar to the SVJ’S motor internally but produces 819bhp at 8500rpm and 560lb ft at 7000rpm – increases of 60bhp and 29lb ft – thanks to a ram-air system that channels air from a big scoop on the roof, along the car’s spine and straight into the intake system.
The SCV12 is longer than an Aventador. The wheelbase alone is 205mm longer, while the bodywork before and aft of this is extended in both directions. Its designers at Centro Stile say they always wanted to create a car with a longer tail that was more dramatic in profile (they succeeded), and, in turn, this helped the aero engineers create a more effective car too. The result is a claimed 1200kg of downforce at 150mph, although Pirro says that this ultimate number isn’t really the key one. The fact that the car develops ‘lots of useable downforce, rather than one high peak of it’ is, he says, far more important.
Lamborghini wasn’t too fussed about making a car with the best 0-62mph time or the highest top speed, the aim instead being to create a very fast track car that is as enjoyable – and as relatively easy – as possible to drive. Even so, the rear-wheel-drive SCV12 will still hit 62mph in well under 3 seconds – although Lamborghini doesn’t say by how much – while its top speed is well beyond 210mph, despite the huge rear wing.
Another element that Pirro is clearly rather chuffed with is the SCV12’S differential, which is mechanical, but electronically operated in that you can alter the preload settings via a rotational button on the top left of the steering yoke (you can’t call it a wheel because what you steer with is categorically not a wheel). Effectively this allows you to open or close the diff to dial in or dial out understeer/oversteer to suit the kind of track you’re at – or even which specific corner you’re attacking on that track.
There are five different engine modes to choose from via a rotational switch on the yoke, each delivering five per cent more power. Only in mode 5 does it give you the full beans. There’s also 12-stage traction control and 12-stage ABS, the first six stages in both cases being essentially wet settings, which means you still get six to play with in the dry depending on how tasty you think you are. The controls for these and other functions are all sprinkled close to hand around a fully digitised Motec instrument display that sits in the centre of the yoke.
Interestingly, the brakes on the car we’re driving are steel, although carbon-ceramics are also available. Pirro says he quite likes the steel rotors because they have a wider operating temperature and wear ‘quite well’. They also don’t offer any less outright braking performance than the carbon discs but cost an awful lot less to replace. The only downside is that they weigh a bit more, but even with steel brakes the overall kerb weight of the SCV12 is well under 1500kg. ‘Which is too much for a pure racing car,’ admits Pirro, ‘but not too bad considering how many electronic systems there are in the car and what our original intentions with it were.’
If you’ve ever driven an Aventador or even a Murciélago before, you will have at least an inkling of what the SCV12 is like to drive. Sort of. You can feel that same DNA in the way it responds to your inputs and feels very obviously midengined in its fundamental behaviour. You still feel like you are sitting at the pointy end of a V-shaped missile in which most of the natural inertia sits behind you – and wants to overtake you if you get it wrong.
But in reality nothing can prepare you for the way the SCV12 dismantles the ground that passes beneath its massive slick Pirelli tyres. Despite a fairly immense initial intimidation factor – the V12 is entirely unsilenced, the steering seems curiously aloof to begin with, as does the ride, while the cabin feels quite a lot like an impossibly small, one-man sauna out of which you can’t really see too
much – the SCV12 actually turns out to be far better balanced and much, much quicker than even the very fastest road-going Aventadors. In fact, it feels nothing like an Aventador once you get comfortable with what it can do.
Around Italy’s Vallelunga circuit, where we’re getting our taste of the SCV12, an Aventador SVJ wouldn’t get within 15 seconds a lap, while even a GT3 Huracán would be trailing by 3 seconds. The sheer acceleration the SCV12 is capable of generating is quite shocking to begin with, it’s that savage, that intense, and the way the X-trac gearbox slices so cleanly up and down its ratios only amplifies the effect. Yet it’s the brakes and the aerodynamic grip this car produces that leave you gasping hardest in disbelief, and make it feel most like a full-blown racing car.
The brakes are heroic in the way you can stop in such a terrifyingly short distance from such enormous speeds, lap after lap, knowing that it is only your limits, not those of the car, that are preventing you from going faster still.
Getting used to the aerodynamics to a point where you can trust them is largely a matter of time, but you need a certain degree of confidence in your own imagination as well, otherwise you’ll never go fast enough to get the air to work in your favour. But if and when you do bring yourself to commit to a high-speed corner and hold on to your insides, the rewards are rich, and the results are fairly surreal.
Even in third-gear corners the SCV12 just sticks when you think surely it’s about to slide. And in fourth- and fifthgear sweepers at 120-140mph, it feels spookily keyed into the tarmac – you can actually sense the downward forces increasing via the steering weight and through the seat as the aerodynamic loads go up.
The steering is hyper-accurate but not exactly bubbling with feel. Instead it provides an effective way of guiding the nose of the SCV12 through corners, even if it’s not a source of any great subjective ecstasy. Unlike the engine and gearbox, which seem oddly conventional compared with the aero and brakes, but still manage to form the heart of the car’s personality on the move.
The gearbox is fantastic, swapping ratios as quickly as you could wish for, although you do need to be positive with your inputs otherwise it’ll spit a half-hearted shift right back at you. As for the V12 engine, it is more magnificent here than it has been in any other Lamborghini we’ve driven. Ever. It is truly a beautiful thing to use, or even just to listen to, with no form of silencing whatsoever for its exhaust and a heart-stopping sense of crescendo to its delivery. There really is nothing else quite like it on this earth right now, and when, finally, this engine goes to another place, a big piece of Lamborghini will go with it.
For this reason alone, the Essenza SCV12 deserves its place alongside the other true greats from Sant’agata, even if it is just an extravagance for the mega-rich.