After endless rumors, multiple teasers, a few leaked images and a full-on concept car Lamborghini’s new SUV, the Urus, has finally been unveiled. As well as taking the covers off its new production 4×4, Lamborghini has released a full technical breakdown of the car including its 641bhp power figure, a top speed of 189mph and a 0-62mph acceleration time of just 3.6sec. Final prices haven’t been confirmed but the Lamborghini Urus is expected to cost approximately the same as Lamborghini’s junior supercar, the Huracan when it goes on sale in the UK.
The Urus’s astonishing performance is thanks to its twin-turbocharged 4-litre V8. It’s the same engine that’s found in other cars in the VW Group, including the Porsche Panamera Turbo and Cayenne Turbo. Rather than ‘just’ 542bhp and 568lb ft, like the engine makes in the Cayenne, the Urus has 641bhp and 627lb ft. Such vast figures help counter the car’s kerb weight of just less than 2200kg and make it capable of achieving supercar-like acceleration of 3.6sec to 62mph – that’s 0.1sec faster than the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4. Such performance figures have encouraged Lamborghini to categorise the Urus as a ‘Super SUV’ and to underline that performance focus, the Urus comes with carbon-ceramic brake discs as standard; 440mm diameter fronts with ten-piston calipers and 370mm rears with six-piston calipers.
The engine isn’t the only similarity to the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, the Urus also uses the same three-chamber air suspension that can alter ride-height and spring rate. It also shares an eight-speed automatic gearbox, a torque vectoring rear differential, electromechanical variable rate anti-roll bars and a rear-wheel steering system.
The Urus has a Torsen self-locking centre differential that sends 60 per cent of the torque to the rear and the remaining 40 to the front in its default setting. However, it can send as much as 70 per cent to the front and 87 per cent to the rear as conditions dictate. The Torsen system is different to the clutch-based set-up in the Cayenne Turbo but similar to those used in the Audi Q7 and Bentley Bentayga.
Despite the Urus having much of the same hardware as other large VW Group SUVs, all are designed to allow the individual attitudes of each manufacturer to be reflected in each car’s calibration and final set up. Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s chief technical officer, makes it clear the Urus will feel distinctive: ‘It’s clear that we’ve used some synergy of components that come from the group, like we did in the past. What makes the difference is the software, the calibration is all the job of development that we did here in Sant’Agata. Our car is completely different from all the others.’
But there’s a reason why so many SUVs in the VW Group use a lot of the same components, and that’s because they’re so useful in combatting the negative aspects of a high riding SUV, as Reggiani clarifies: ‘In terms of weight, we are in the range of 2.1 to 2.2 tonnes. But it’s also the fact that we prefer to put in some kilos more in order to have rear wheel steer because this is able to compensate. In the end, some technical solutions were able to compensate for more of the weight that we add in. This is a job from an engineering point of view, it must be done continuously [throughout development] to be able to define the right set up of the car.’