Crash Test Dummy

Drive the URUS two months ahead of its worldwide launch? Don't mind if we do...

- Charlie Turner

 

​​​​Over two tonnes of super-SUV is heading towards the Italian scenery. Fast. This is bad. After a confidence-inspiring first lap around the Strada Bianca gravel circuit at the top-secret Nardò test facility in southern Italy, the combination of over-commitment and surface change sees me charging towards the bushes.

My subsequent slide into the right-hander continues for what seems like a heroic length of time but is, in reality, only a couple of seconds and somehow I emerge out the other side. This is good.

Subsequent laps give me time to try and process more of what’s going on. The grip and acceleration are impressive, but the car’s poise is what grabs your attention. Its ability to manage its un-Lamborghini-like mass at speed on an undulating, constantly changing surface is staggering. It never runs out of suspension travel, never bottoms out; it just gets on with it, allowing you to focus on throwing it into the next corner and – hopefully – exit sideways while trailing a plume of dust. This is no ordinary Lambo.

Ever since the debut of the Urus concept at the Beijing show in 2012, the world has been coming to terms with the prospect of a Lamborghini SUV. Five years later I’m part of a privileged group of four journalists invited to Nardò in late 2017 to drive the prototype and feedback on the results.

Hopefully you’ll have pored over the details already on the previous pages, but it’s worth revisiting what is an obscene set of numbers for a 2.2-tonne SUV. Charging to 100km/h in 3.6 seconds is a dead heat with an Audi R8 V10 Spyder, and just two tenths behind a Porsche 911 GT3 PDK. That top speed, not that you’re ever likely to explore it, is a full 22km/h clear of the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S. Crucial for bragging rights down at the polo club.