Sam Wallace tests Lamborghini's high performance SUV; the Urus. Watch the full video above
It’s not cheap but we think we’ve found the perfect SUV. The Urus is Lamborghini’s first foray into the SUV market and it has created something so absurd that it makes sense.
At first glance it’s more ostentatious than a Real Housewives of Auckland cocktail party. But unlike the Real Housewives, it gets better looking the more time you spend with it. Cameras don’t do it justice. It’s not until you’re standing next to it do you realise it’s squatting on ginormous 23in rims. Remember when we used to dream of 17in rims?
So what is a Urus? Our phone’s Italian translation app says an 'urus' is a a large and recently extinct long-horned wild ox. That makes sense because a ox is a hard-working beast and you can literally fill the Urus’ boot with a family of suitcases and put three kids across the back seat.
Oh course every SUV on the market can achieve this feat. But what makes this SUV the best is everything else it does, like accelerate. And this ox accelerates like someone has poked it with a red hot branding iron.
Before Lamborghini Auckland would allow us to cut loose in its SUV with the same power as an Aussie Supercar, we had to sign an insurance form. Should we be unlucky enough to have an incident in our long-horned wild ox, we had to pay the first $21,000.
The obvious test was acceleration, 0–100km/h. But the world of health and safety complicates doing car reviews. A man wearing a hi-vis jacket and holding a clip board wouldn’t permit us to do this test on a public road because apparently accelerating to the speed limit faster that Marty McFly is dangerous.
So we had to go to a track. But in the document we had just signed with Lamborghini suggesting I would have to sell my first born if I crashed, included fine print stipulating there was no insurance if i ventured on to a race track. So we didn’t go to a track. Instead we went to Meremere drag strip, a loophole we thought wouldn’t hold up in court.
That added more implications, and this time we took notice. Because if we didn’t, we could die and leave a giant bill for NZME for a stacked Lamborghini.
And by listening, we learned that drag strips spray a plastic polymer (a glue) on the track to give drag cars traction. And, if it’s been raining, the water sits on the coating and turns it into a quarter-mile ice-skating rink.
So there we were in a $340,000-plus SUV on the Meremere ice skating rink with no insurance and an hour to film our review. So what did we do? We selected Corsa (or track mode) that lit up a bottom-clenching traction control “off” light on my dash and we buried the boot.
And despite the strip being slippery, the ox bit and launched.
We’ve done plenty of sub-4sec 0-100km/h times before, but this was different. This was in a 2200kg SUV with a terrified cameraman in the backseat. On our first pass we did 3.94s. But it’s not the number that’s staggering, it’s the way this Lamborghini moves the weight that is so ungodly. It feels like the wheels aren’t touching the road. Like you’re in a hovercraft or you have actually gone back to the future.
Lamborghini has broken traditions with the 4-litre turbocharged V8. And you won’t be disappointed. It barks as it unleashes 477kW while tearing at the drag strip with 850Nm, snarling its way through the 7-speed gearbox. And it dawns on you, this pure acceleration is now packaged up into something you can live with. The Urus does everything we need a car to do and more.
And that includes wearing my slick-looking shade, winding the driver’s window down and popping my my 15-week-old son in the back seat to drive along Ponsonby Rd, listening to The Wiggles sing Hot Potato through 21 Bang and Olufsen speakers.
It felt and sounded magnificent. So why buy a Lamborghini SUV? Because it has all the excitement of a Lamborghini. And because, despite being the first turbocharged Lambo, it holds onto the fibre of its fabric. Because you can still feel its heritage and it makes you feel special.
But at the same time, you can drop your kids at private school. It’s a Lamborghini you can share.