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By Jonathan Crouch

The Lamborghini Urus redefines exactly what a performance super-SUV can be. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 48

With the Lamborghini Urus, the brand's first performance SUV, everything's super-sized: shape, performance, technology, running costs. Here's another car of this kind that's turned around its brand, being blindingly fast, very luxurious and properly practical without the lumbering feel common to many segment rivals. It's very desirable indeed.

Backgroundword count: 169

You might think the idea of a Lamborghini super-SUV a little strange but the company itself actually believes that it basically invented this kind of car - with the brutal V12-engined LM002 model of the Eighties and Nineties. That hand-built muscle car was though, a rather different thing from today's Urus, the car that has singlehandedly changed the company from a boutique sports car maker to a brand with a production capacity that now rivals that of Ferrari. Only 328 LM002 models were ever made. The Urus, in contrast, has doubled its marque's production output to around 7,000 cars a year. You wonder what company founder Ferruccio Lamborghini would have made of it all. It's only forty years since this famous maker was in receivership. Now, it's more successful than McLaren. But at what price? To create the Urus, the company has had to borrow almost everything from Volkswagen Group engineering. So can the result be a true Lamborghini? Could any modern SUV ever really be? Let's find out.

Driving Experienceword count: 345

Though virtually all the ingredients here are from other Volkswagen Group products, Lamborghini claims to have used them in a way unique to this Sant'Agata brand. Take the engine. No, it's not a V10 or V12 as is usual from this Latin maker. Instead, it's the same twin turbo V8 as you'll find in cars like the Porsche Cayenne Coupe Turbo and the Audi RS Q8, though here it puts out a few more braked horses - 657bhp to be exact, along with 850Nm of torque. This is the first time any Lamborghini has been turbocharged but if you're bothered by that, the official performance figures should take your mind off the fact: rest to 62mph in 3.3s, rest to 124mph in 12.4s and a top speed of 190mph. There are two models, the base 'S' and, with the same output, the top 'Performante' variant, which is 47kgs lighter, rides 20mm lower, uses bespoke Pirelli Trofeo R tyres and has steel springs rather than air suspension. The Performate also gives you a titanium exhaust, lighter wheels, an extra 'rally' mode, a new rear wing, a gearbox with quicker downshifts and a revised Torsen central diff that can send more power to the rear. On both models, there are six standards drive modes - 'Street', 'Sport' and 'Track' (which lowers the car by 15mm) are the paved surface ones. If you've ticked the right options box, you'll also get three further off road modes (yes, the Urus can capably go off road) which can raise the body by as much as 40mm. Plus of course there's an individual menu via which you can decide your own parameters for suspension feel, engine note and steering weight. Huge carbon ceramic brakes with ten-piston callipers are standard, as is a 48-volt active anti-roll system. The four wheel drive system differs a little from other VW Group products in the way that it works with a Torsen centre differential that can direct up to 85% of drive to the rear, plus there's a torque-vectoring rear differential for extra cornering traction.

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