LAMBORGHINI URUS: DRIVEN

Where do we start?! EV Stig here having just arrived back from my first ever drive in the Lamborghini Urus. With excited customers around the U.K., and the world expecting the first cars to hit the streets in the next couple of weeks, we got an exclusive look at the brand new Lamborghini SUV and we were lucky enough to experience it from behind the wheel. 

Let’s first talk about Lamborghini reviving the SUV product. We first properly saw Lamborghini experiment with an SUV with the LM002 back in the 1980’s, 1986 to be specific but for a lot of us, that is a distant memory! Which is why I’m a little bit excited about the Urus. The LM002 was everything a Lamborghini should be: unnecessary, loud, uneconomical, uncomfortable with outlandish designs. Well ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 21st century version of the LM002! The Lamborghini Urus certainly looks like a Lamborghini, is unnecessary in many ways, it’s loud BUT....this time it’s got comfort and economy on it’s side. Surely this is the ultimate package?? 

The Lamborghini Urus was unveiled online in December 2017 and was first on public display at the Geneva Motorshow and it sure drew a crowd. An SUV Lamborghini hasn’t been seen in over 30 years! And here we have a brand new one. Sat alongside the Aventador S and Huracan Performante Spyder, it didn’t look out of depth. It’s shape, angular and aggressive exterior pointed in every direction wanting to go fast. With a 4.0 litre turbocharged V8 (also seen in the Audi RS6), it’s safe to say we all expected it to be fast. But it’s easy to build a fast car for straight line speed, even at the size of the Urus. Just squeeze the most powerful engine into the body and hope for the best. But if Lamborghini are going to come barging back into the SUV world, they should be launching a car that can handle like their supercars. With Bentley, Porsche, Rolls Royce and potentially Ferrari chomping at their heels to claim a slice of the Super SUV market, the Urus needed to be nimble through the corners, fast in a straight line, and comfy through the town. Not to mention it needed to have the ability of navigating off road terrain. After all, 4x4’s were created for off-roading.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to report that the Lamborghini Urus passes all of the above tests, questions and surpasses all of my expectations. The interior is like nothing I have seen from a Lamborghini. It’s clinically Italian, the leather is soft, the stitching is perfect and all the buttons, touch screens and digital displayers look stunning. The viewing pleasure from the driver’s seat is worth the eye-watering price tag along. You know from the moment you open the door to sneak a peak inside, that you are most definitely in a Lamborghini. And that in my eyes, was half of the challenge for Lamborghini. How do they make an SUV feel like their flagship V12. The doors don’t go up, you’re not uncomfortably sitting on the floor, and you’re not craving more visibility. Inside the Urus you have all the technology, all of the vision, all of the comfort yet you still know damn well that you are in a Urus. Bravo Lamborghini, Bravo. 

Let’s move onto the exciting stuff. What happens when you turn the car on, the engine becomes alive and the exhaust system pops more than if you were to drive over a road manufactured out of bubble wrap. This was the second half of the test in my eyes. Firstly, Lamborghini needed to immerse you in the world of Lamborghini, which they’d achieved. Now, it comes down to the driving experience. I’ll be honest, by this point I was about 80% sold on the car. I loved everything about it and in a way, I wasn’t too fussed about driving it. Lamborghini’s of old are known for being a bit heavy, clumsy and unfinished, ESPECIALLY the LM002. But the Urus, this is a totally different beast. It has taken everything that you see from luxury/ super road cars of today, squeezed them up and unloaded every secret, every law of physic and every slice of magic into it’s chassis. The moment you plant your foot on the right foot, you’re already at your destination, the moment you approach a corner, you’re already through the other side. At double the speed you entered it at. It’s fast yes, but like I said, that isn’t impressive or difficult to achieve. It’s the dynamics, the cornering, the braking and the steering. Everything combined creates a Supercar, but it’s still an SUV. Some of the most powerful production brakes on the planet stop this car immediately in any given circumstance or weather condition. The car’s ability to pull 1.1 lateral G before ANY body roll sneaks in, and it can accelerate 0-60mph in 3.6 seconds. Which is around the same as a Ferrari Enzo. A FERRARI ENZO! The £500,000 Limited halo Ferrari which now commands a price of over £2million. Everything about the Lamborghini Urus is almost unbelievable. I say almost, because I’ve actually experienced it to believe it. Everything I heard about the car up until the point of me driving it, was unbelievable. But now I can believe it. 

I’m yet to take one off road, but with 5 driver modes and enough ground clearance to probably park a Huracan directly underneath, I think it’s far to say the Urus will impress in that department also. Whether we’ll see customers risking their £200,000 SUV for the sake of looking cool with a bit of mud on their bodywork is another question only time will be able to answer. So I’ll leave it at that, the Lamborghini Urus is one of the most exciting cars of 2018 and I can’t wait to experience one again!

Update August 2018: I am pleased to report that the Lamborghini Urus Hire is coming to the EVHIRE rental fleet! You can follow EVHIRE's Urus hire journey on the Supercars Of London YouTube Channel here.