Legend In The Making

Sport utility vehicles have evolved into an entire ecosystem of their own, from compact to large, and modest to luxurious. In 2017, Lamborghini added another facet to the market with the fastest SUV of them all—the Urus. Andre Lam heads to Rome to discover its power.

- Andre Lam

FOR THE BETTER PART OF THE last two decades, Lamborghini was planning to create a four-door sports saloon to complement its supercar range, which comprised the Aventador and Huracán coupes. It even developed a concept car called Estoque but put it into cold storage when the sport utility vehicle (SUV) bug started spreading across the automotive world like wildfire. The Italian marque, however, wasn’t entirely new to the SUV game—it had developed a prototype for military use in the late 1970s and later, the road-ready LM002 in 1986—and was thus more partial to entering the burgeoning car segment. With that, the Urus is born.

As Lamborghini’s designers would realise, morphing the sleek shape of the marque’s supercars into a bulkier SUV was a monumental task. They took cues from the military look of the LM002 such as its hexagonal wheel arches, and worked on creating a dynamic angular design that would ensure low aerodynamic drag and reduce aerodynamic lift. The result is a fierce and deceptively compact-looking five-seater SUV that is actually one of the biggest in the market.

The Urus’ interior comes across as the luxurious version of an aircraft cockpit. Like its supercar siblings, the car’s push start button and toggle switches on its central console give the impression that an aircraft designer might have had a say on how it would look. In fact, the aeronautical look very much suits the Urus, which boasts a top speed of 305km/h—the fastest for any SUV. And in case one needed any reminding that this is a Lamborghini, the car sports the signature hexagonal air vents similar to that of the Huracán.

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