LAMBORGHINI URUS PERFORMANTE

TESTED 20.1.23, HERTFORDSHIRE ON SALE NOW | Super-SUV is pushed yet further with power gain, lower suspension and wider tracks

- RICHARD LANE

There's a strange convergence taking place at some of the world's great performance car makers. The game seems to be to develop essentially the same car from starting points at opposite ends of the engineering galaxy, with some very entertaining, Mad Maxstyle freaks emerging as a result.

At Lamborghini, on one hand you have the Huracán, which has been jacked up 44mm and cladded with rowdier bodywork to create the Sterrato, a supercar that believes it's an SUV. On the other hand you have the Urus, which has had its air suspension swapped for steel springs that set it 20mm lower and been given widened tracks to create the Performante, an SUV that believes it's a supercar.

No surprise that the Performante is absurdly fast; it would have been even had its Porsche-designed twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 not been boosted from 641bhp to 657bhp. It's only a nominal increase, but those totals generate performance that defies the car's 2150kg mass (down 47kg on the standard Urus).