When I think of Lamborghini supercars and their iconic colours, I think of a mixture of vivid yellows, greens, and reds — each with their own lengthy Italian name echoed proudly at Cars and Coffee events by their owners. What I don't necessarily think about are pale, muted, flat, shades of brown. But, here we are with the new SVJ Roadster, decorated in an evidently spectacular colour called Bronzo Zenas.
Like its coupe cousin, the Roadster boasts an old-school 6.5-litre V12 engine — making 566kW of power and 720Nm of torque. Those figures are sent to all four wheels, with the aid of a seven-speed ISR transmission.
All together, the Roadster rockets to 100km/h in 2.9 seconds, 200km/h in 8.8 seconds, and it will hit a top speed of over 350km/h. As impressive as those figures are, they're a shade down on what the coupe is capable of due to the extra weight of the Roadster ... although, not by much. The coupe is a mere one tenth quicker to 100km/h, for example.
Wind the clock back a few years, and it wasn't too uncommon to find that Roadster variants of performance cars would struggle to be anywhere near as potent as their static-topped cousins. But in recent times manufacturers have worked hard to refine their roofing mechanisms while also strengthening platforms with things like carbon-fibre tubs, which ensure that convertible variants need either minimal extra structural material, or none at all.
It's this thought process that's seen this Roadster SVJ land with a weight figure that's just 50kg more than the coupe. Both of its roof panels are made out of carbon fibre, weighing just 6kg each. When they're off the car, owners can store them under the 'frunk'. Other Roadster-specific changes include a rear window that can be lowered or raised, much like the electronic wind deflector window in McLaren's Spider variants.
The SVJ Roadster is, otherwise, a literal carbon copy of the coupe. It comes with an active aerodynamics system that adjusts the front splitter and rear wing on the go to "achieve high downforce or low drag". The adjustments aren't linear front to rear either, as the system can also vary wing angles left to right, which improves cornering performance at high speed.
It's stuff like this that's seen the SVJ — a big brute of a thing based on an older platform and lacking forced induction of any kind — top the production-car time-sheets at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Although, its 6min 44.9sec time was topped last November by a Porsche 911 GT2 with Manthey-Racing performance additives.
That complicated aero set-up is supported by magneto rheological suspension with beefed up anti-roll bars, rear-wheel steering, and carbon-ceramic brakes.
Just 800 SVJ Roadsters are set to be made, with American and European pricing starting at US$573,966 and €387,007 respectively.
