A brand new Lambo that closes the gap between supercars and hypercars
I kid you not, I spent no more than two of my 14 laps around Vallelunga in Corsa. At that point, the shifts turn violent, the power delivery alters and the ESP partially cuts off. There’s no telling when you’ve crossed 100 kph, but the spec sheet says 2.9 seconds. Every single shift makes your neck cry out for relief, so you do the more sensible thing and shift to Sport, which gives you the best of both worlds. It’s at this point that you realise how much Lamborghini has changed.
The Aventador isn’t a supercar; it borders on what I’d like to call a teaser hypercar. 691 bhp in a Lamborghini is like putting all those hooves on a shopping cart – it trots like the devil’s own ride. In Roma Capitale’s city centre, parked next to the Murcielago SV, which incidentally till yesterday, was strictly X-rated material, the predecessor gets pushed down to the ‘barely teen’ category. The Aventador looks like it will re-arrange everything, navel downwards. There are so many cuts, edges and sharp surfaces, it’s easy to hurt yourself standing close to it.
Lamborghini has also gone ahead and developed a carbon-fibre monocoque, resting on aluminium subframes for the car. A phenomenal 70 per cent of the construction of the monocoque is carbon fibre, with the doors, bonnet and bumper made of aluminium. There is also lots of thermoplastic in places, and when replaced with carbon fibre, the car will be badged an SV! But before that we’ll see the drop-top next year, and it will be really fascinating to see how rigid it can truly be, because Lamborghini claim that the hard-top is one of the most rigid cars on sale today.
You still need to twist, contort and even warp your lower limbs before entering the Aventador. The scissor doors are the only thing in common with the Murcielago, for once inside, you will appreciate the fact that this is the most logically laid out Lambo in half a century. Everything falls to hand beautifully and the driving position itself is flawless, a rare feat for a car with the Raging Bull crest. The LED instrumentation has nice use of colours, but can appear gimmicky. Flick a button and the rev-counter is replaced by the speedo and vice-versa, though you may eventually prefer keeping the rev-counter smack bang in your line of sight. Stunningly crafted, there’s the start button behind a flip switch, akin to the Noble M600’s traction control switch.
For pure Lamborghini drama, however, you need to crank the engine. Once you do, the air is greeted by a bellowing V12, whose bark will remain etched in your memory forever. The 6.5-litre V12 is brand new and owes nothing to the Bizzarinni-engineered V12 in the Murcie. Its 60-degree bank sounds a bit ridiculous at first; then you realise they need that space to route the exhausts. It is also amazingly light, weighing just a little more than the body in white, the car itself boasting of a dry weight of just 1575 kg (about 1625-1650 kg kerb). The short-stroke layout helps it rev as high as 8250 rpm, and it produces very little internal friction.
Everything with this car is about rigidity and bringing the experience closer to the driver. The pushrod suspension all around is something single-seat racers might swear by, and here at Vallelunga, it helped deliver the kind of handling characteristics that are just right. Coupled with a new Haldex-IV all-wheel drive system that transfers up to 35 per cent of the torque to the front wheels, the car provides ample grip and you can literally dive into a corner, shed a little speed and power out, instead of applying the typical slow-in/fast-out technique. At first you fight hard to get the car out of shape and we were clearly told not to touch the ESP button. The more rubber we laid on the track in our attempt to get the car out of shape, the more I realised why it wasn’t adviseable. Diving deep into corners, in Sport, the tail twitched out ever so slightly, so to raise the bar a bit more, I shifted into Corsa.
Corsa is like digging deep into the bowels of the Aventador. There is a rapid change in behaviour and the first signs are those explosive gearshifts, combined with a stinging pain at the base of your neck. The new ISR gearbox isn’t like modern-day dual clutches, but I’d pick it for making the driver a part of the action in the most natural manner possible. The shifts are outrageously quick, and until yesterday I thought that the Gallardo’s e-gear setup wasn’t half bad either. Every gearshift becomes a fight to keep it clean and smooth, but it’s your backside that begs for its life, even before you worry about looking foolish in front of the world press. Yet, Corsa has one last trick under its sleeve. Approaching the back straight complex at Vallelunga is a left-handed hairpin and letting more gas than I should have the tail stepped out more than I’d imagined – there was very little electronic intervention as I caught the steering on correction. It’s at that point that you know that the drama is still there – all pervading.
I can’t help but wonder how the 1600 lucky souls around the world (11 in India) may be feeling right now. All I can tell them is this – they’ve invested in, what is without an iota of doubt, the best super sportscar in the world right now.
LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR
POWERTRAIN
Displacement: 6498cc, V12
Max power: 691 bhp@8250 rpm
Max torque: 70.4 kgm@5500 rpm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic, AWD STEERING
Type: Servotronic with three modes
Turning radius: 6.25 m SUSPENSION
Front & Rear: Double wishbones, coil springs, pushrod, anti-roll bar BRAKES
Front: 400 mm carbon-ceramic discs
Rear: 380 mm carbon-ceramic discs
It’s pure drama. At the end of the back straight at Vallelunga, nearing 240 kph, the Aventador isn’t the kind of car you want to mess around with. In Corsa mode, each gearshift is the equivalent of launching a precision-guided bomb – aimed to hurt the driver’s neck. At 50 milliseconds a shift, the Aventador isn’t forgiving and after having tried my repertoire of driving skills (back-off shifts, part-throttle shifts, full-bore shifts), I admitted defeat.
Nothing prepares you for what Lamborghini has achieved with the Aventador. It’s the most deceptive supercar on sale today. One moment, it’s the Grim Reaper, with all those slashes and lack of curves, and the next moment it drives like an Audi R8 – easy to drive and live with. But of course, Giorgio Sanna, Lamborghini’s new Valentino Balboni, hasn’t yet told you that you are still stuck in Spada mode, where the gearshifts feel tame and the car is, well, a large German limousine at best.
I kid you not, I spent no more than two of my 14 laps around Vallelunga in Corsa. At that point, the shifts turn violent, the power delivery alters and the ESP partially cuts off. There’s no telling when you’ve crossed 100 kph, but the spec sheet says 2.9 seconds. Every single shift makes your neck cry out for relief, so you do the more sensible thing and shift to Sport, which gives you the best of both worlds. It’s at this point that you realise how much Lamborghini has changed.
The Aventador isn’t a supercar; it borders on what I’d like to call a teaser hypercar. 691 bhp in a Lamborghini is like putting all those hooves on a shopping cart – it trots like the devil’s own ride. In Roma Capitale’s city centre, parked next to the Murcielago SV, which incidentally till yesterday, was strictly X-rated material, the predecessor gets pushed down to the ‘barely teen’ category. The Aventador looks like it will re-arrange everything, navel downwards. There are so many cuts, edges and sharp surfaces, it’s easy to hurt yourself standing close to it.
It also has enough scoops to keep you interested, especially the ducts just aft of the scissor doors that are probably the largest cooling ducts I have ever seen on a production car. The Y-shaped LED string in the headlamps add to the aggression and yes, those huge spider web wheels just complete the picture of brutality. Like every other Lambo, there are details that are not entirely visible at first, like the four-exhaust tail ends within the aluminium housing at the rear, or the fact that a rear spoiler is deployed electronically, depending on speed and mode.
Lamborghini has also gone ahead and developed a carbon-fibre monocoque, resting on aluminium subframes for the car. A phenomenal 70 per cent of the construction of the monocoque is carbon fibre, with the doors, bonnet and bumper made of aluminium. There is also lots of thermoplastic in places, and when replaced with carbon fibre, the car will be badged an SV! But before that we’ll see the drop-top next year, and it will be really fascinating to see how rigid it can truly be, because Lamborghini claim that the hard-top is one of the most rigid cars on sale today.
You still need to twist, contort and even warp your lower limbs before entering the Aventador. The scissor doors are the only thing in common with the Murcielago, for once inside, you will appreciate the fact that this is the most logically laid out Lambo in half a century. Everything falls to hand beautifully and the driving position itself is flawless, a rare feat for a car with the Raging Bull crest. The LED instrumentation has nice use of colours, but can appear gimmicky. Flick a button and the rev-counter is replaced by the speedo and vice-versa, though you may eventually prefer keeping the rev-counter smack bang in your line of sight. Stunningly crafted, there’s the start button behind a flip switch, akin to the Noble M600’s traction control switch.
For pure Lamborghini drama, however, you need to crank the engine. Once you do, the air is greeted by a bellowing V12, whose bark will remain etched in your memory forever. The 6.5-litre V12 is brand new and owes nothing to the Bizzarinni-engineered V12 in the Murcie. Its 60-degree bank sounds a bit ridiculous at first; then you realise they need that space to route the exhausts. It is also amazingly light, weighing just a little more than the body in white, the car itself boasting of a dry weight of just 1575 kg (about 1625-1650 kg kerb). The short-stroke layout helps it rev as high as 8250 rpm, and it produces very little internal friction.
Even standing still, the car sounds menacing. The electronically controlled exhaust has a two-stage setup, but crikey, even at low-pitch you feel like you are standing next to a grid filled with Le Mans racers. As the car burbled at Vallelunga’s pit area, I wondered what loud would be like and so rolled out behind one of the pace cars – a Superleggera LP 570-4. At first, it felt calm and composed, but as we exited the pits and Sanna went down two gears in the Gallardo, a game of cat and mouse began. What followed were frantic downshifts, the car leaping forward and letting go of some of its inhibitions. My first reaction was how perfectly light, yet precise the steering is. But what truly amazed me were the brakes. Approaching C2, a right-handed second-gear corner, it wasn’t so much the downshifts that were contributing to shedding the speed as it was the brakes. The carbon ceramic numbers may not have as much feel, but by god do they haul the 1.65-tonne car to sanity.
Everything with this car is about rigidity and bringing the experience closer to the driver. The pushrod suspension all around is something single-seat racers might swear by, and here at Vallelunga, it helped deliver the kind of handling characteristics that are just right. Coupled with a new Haldex-IV all-wheel drive system that transfers up to 35 per cent of the torque to the front wheels, the car provides ample grip and you can literally dive into a corner, shed a little speed and power out, instead of applying the typical slow-in/fast-out technique. At first you fight hard to get the car out of shape and we were clearly told not to touch the ESP button. The more rubber we laid on the track in our attempt to get the car out of shape, the more I realised why it wasn’t adviseable. Diving deep into corners, in Sport, the tail twitched out ever so slightly, so to raise the bar a bit more, I shifted into Corsa.
Corsa is like digging deep into the bowels of the Aventador. There is a rapid change in behaviour and the first signs are those explosive gearshifts, combined with a stinging pain at the base of your neck. The new ISR gearbox isn’t like modern-day dual clutches, but I’d pick it for making the driver a part of the action in the most natural manner possible. The shifts are outrageously quick, and until yesterday I thought that the Gallardo’s e-gear setup wasn’t half bad either. Every gearshift becomes a fight to keep it clean and smooth, but it’s your backside that begs for its life, even before you worry about looking foolish in front of the world press. Yet, Corsa has one last trick under its sleeve. Approaching the back straight complex at Vallelunga is a left-handed hairpin and letting more gas than I should have the tail stepped out more than I’d imagined – there was very little electronic intervention as I caught the steering on correction. It’s at that point that you know that the drama is still there – all pervading.
You go back to the track for one last time, one last high. So you leave it in Sport and enjoy the car as it is meant to be. And boy, does it come together in a manner which shows why Lamborghinis have become poster objects of young men for generations. There is a sense of drama in everything that happens – the gearshifts, the way the grip builds even as the Aventador you are driving is now on its third set of tyres for the day. There is still an explosion every time you pin the throttle and shift the gears, yet Lamborghini has just made the process that much easier, smoother and slicker. The manic power delivery and the loony-ness when you overdo it is more restrained, but it’s every bit the Lamborghini modern-day drivers will learn to appreciate.
I can’t help but wonder how the 1600 lucky souls around the world (11 in India) may be feeling right now. All I can tell them is this – they’ve invested in, what is without an iota of doubt, the best super sportscar in the world right now.
LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR
POWERTRAIN
Displacement: 6498cc, V12
Max power: 691 bhp@8250 rpm
Max torque: 70.4 kgm@5500 rpm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic, AWD STEERING
Type: Servotronic with three modes
Turning radius: 6.25 m SUSPENSION
Front & Rear: Double wishbones, coil springs, pushrod, anti-roll bar BRAKES
Front: 400 mm carbon-ceramic discs
Rear: 380 mm carbon-ceramic discs
TYRES
255/35 ZR 19 (f), 335/30 ZR 20 (r)
255/35 ZR 19 (f), 335/30 ZR 20 (r)
DIMENSIONS
L/W/H (mm): 4780/2030/1136
Wheelbase: 2700 mm
Kerb weight: 1625-1650 kg (est)
L/W/H (mm): 4780/2030/1136
Wheelbase: 2700 mm
Kerb weight: 1625-1650 kg (est)
PERFORMANCE
0-100 kph: 2.9 secs
0-200 kph: 8.9 secs
0-300 kph: 24.5 secs
Top speed: 350 kph
0-100 kph: 2.9 secs
0-200 kph: 8.9 secs
0-300 kph: 24.5 secs
Top speed: 350 kph
Second shot
What our roving supercar specialist, NICK HALL thinks about the Aventador
At 240 kph, on the main straight of Vallelunga, with a 6.5-litre V12 wailing in my ear, objectivity falls by the wayside and I find myself giggling and dancing in the seat. On lap two, only the g-forces pushing me into the bucket seat stops me licking the Lamborghini Aventador’s window. There is just something special about a Lamborghini, an emotional overload that renders normal judgment useless. If it were an animal it would be, well, a bull, and that just hands down kicks the bejesus out of a horse. Rohin is going to tell you all about the hard stuff that requires research and more than a passing glance at the tech spec. That frees me up on this rare occasion to talk pure theatre, which is what this car is all about.
It’s a perfect Molotov cocktail of control, explosive power and noise – oh my god, the noise. You can really hear induction, pistons and exhaust gases at work and as the seven-speed slams home the next gear and almost shunts the whole car sideways with the sheer violence of the move, the sheer madness of the thing has me grinning like a maniac. It’s quick, it’s 691 bhp with a 0-100 kph time of 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 350 kph. Speed is a given, but it’s all about the total crushing authority with which it lays that power down, and the shocked double take I have to do halfway down the straight as the car blasts through 200 kph and just keeps going. Weirdly enough, it’s not a perfect car – there’s way too much visible plastic for my liking on a car this costly.
None of this matters, though. Aventador owners might take their car on track occasionally, and they’ll have fun, but it’s a road car designed to make an outrageous impression and announce to the rest of the Billionaire Boys’ Club that they have, indeed, arrived. And should they arrive at a suitably long straight and plant the throttle to the floor, any objectivity will fall by the wayside as the outrageous numbers plough into that TFT speedo and a little bit of dribble slides down the window…
What our roving supercar specialist, NICK HALL thinks about the Aventador
At 240 kph, on the main straight of Vallelunga, with a 6.5-litre V12 wailing in my ear, objectivity falls by the wayside and I find myself giggling and dancing in the seat. On lap two, only the g-forces pushing me into the bucket seat stops me licking the Lamborghini Aventador’s window. There is just something special about a Lamborghini, an emotional overload that renders normal judgment useless. If it were an animal it would be, well, a bull, and that just hands down kicks the bejesus out of a horse. Rohin is going to tell you all about the hard stuff that requires research and more than a passing glance at the tech spec. That frees me up on this rare occasion to talk pure theatre, which is what this car is all about.
It’s a perfect Molotov cocktail of control, explosive power and noise – oh my god, the noise. You can really hear induction, pistons and exhaust gases at work and as the seven-speed slams home the next gear and almost shunts the whole car sideways with the sheer violence of the move, the sheer madness of the thing has me grinning like a maniac. It’s quick, it’s 691 bhp with a 0-100 kph time of 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 350 kph. Speed is a given, but it’s all about the total crushing authority with which it lays that power down, and the shocked double take I have to do halfway down the straight as the car blasts through 200 kph and just keeps going. Weirdly enough, it’s not a perfect car – there’s way too much visible plastic for my liking on a car this costly.
None of this matters, though. Aventador owners might take their car on track occasionally, and they’ll have fun, but it’s a road car designed to make an outrageous impression and announce to the rest of the Billionaire Boys’ Club that they have, indeed, arrived. And should they arrive at a suitably long straight and plant the throttle to the floor, any objectivity will fall by the wayside as the outrageous numbers plough into that TFT speedo and a little bit of dribble slides down the window…
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