Lamborghini Urus Performante

The Italians stick one of their most serious suffixes on their most sensible model. So what's it like?

- STEPHEN DOBIE

IT'D BE REMISS WHEN REVIEWING THE Lamborghini Urus Performante not to mention how out of kilter it is with the world around it. How can a £209,000, 657bhp SUV exist comfortably alongside a general populace worrying about climate and cost-of-living crises? The simple fact is it can't, and to prospective owners that may be the very point. Though it would be unfair to single Lamborghini out in this regard, of course: the Urus isn't short of rivals, and the Performante sees it bulk up to better take on the DBX 707s and Turbo GTs of this world.

Given the way the Urus has flown off the shelves - becoming the best-selling Lambo ever in a laughably short space of time the Performante could feasibly have been a light ECU tickle, a frenzied paintjob and a host of carbon aero bits and it would still have sold by the bucketload. In fact it gains all of those things, but there's a whole lot more going on, too. Perhaps a tacit -admission that the original bore just a little too much of the character of the RS Q8 with which it shared components.

I say 'original' Urus because the Performante shares its new, higher tune of 4-litre twin-turbo V8 (up 16bhp) with the now entry-level Urus S, which is effectively a mid-life rejig for the model as a whole. But while the S continues to ride on air suspension, its wilder sibling is fixed 20mm lower on lighter steel springs to keep its centre of gravity as low as possible. Not making the thing an SUV in the first place would lower it yet further, of course...