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Lambo Urus to stay true to concept, but almost didn't happen

Lamborghini has been making noise about adding a third model line for years, and it's finally going to happen now that the Urus concept has been approved for production. It'll likely be a while yet before all the details are sorted out and revealed to the public, but while visiting the factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Autoblog was able to glean some intriguing details about the Italian automaker's forthcoming crossover and its path it is taking from concept to production. "It's good to have heritage, but the LM002 is not the reference or the blueprint." - Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann We first saw the Urus concept back in 2012, and Lamborghini has been lobbying its parent company Volkswagen ever since for the go-ahead to put it into production. Now three years later, it finally has the green light. A company representative told Autoblog the production version looks "very" close to the concept. (No ground-up redesign here, then, like sister-brand Bentley did with its inaugural crossover project.) Speaking with a small group of journalists in Sant'Agata, the company's chief executive Stephan Winkelmann confirmed that "the SUV could be the [company's] first car with a turbo, and it could be the first car with a plug-in, if we have the opportunity to have more than one engine." The Urus (or however it's ultimately labeled for production) will also be decidedly geared towards on-road performance – unlike the Rambo Lambo on display in the museum next door. "It's good to have heritage," said Winkelmann, "but the LM002 is not the reference or the blueprint" for the new model. As to the question of why it has taken three years to get approval, and why it will take another three to put it into production, Winkelmann was frank: "Basically if you look at our numbers, we are a company which is growing at a fast pace, but we are very small," said the affable executive. "We had to find a way to almost double our efforts, because it's not the exchange of a model line, with the Gallardo and Huracan, it's adding a model line. And not out of 20 to come to 21 models, but from two to three is a major effort, and you have to have a rock-solid business case." "Putting 500 more people inside a company which is now at 1,200, you can imagine what it means. Doubling almost the size of the area here where we are sitting today. Investing hundreds and hundreds of millions.

6 things you should know about the Lamborghini Urus

Lamborghini has finally revealed its second SUV in history. The road-oriented vehicle has a 641-horsepower twin-turbo V8 and highly creased body panels. There are plenty of interesting factoids packed into its four-door shape. We highlight the most interesting of them, here. It's named after a breed of cattle. Though many Lamborghinis have been named after specific fighting bulls, this one is named after an entire breed. The extinct breed is called urus, or sometimes aurochs, that is closely related to Spanish fighting bulls of today. It's the first Lamborghini with active roll control. When a car gets tall and heavy, it wants to lean a lot more when cornering. To counter that, Lamborghini fitted the Urus with an active roll control system to help keep the body flat going through turns. It's also one of a number of technologies meant to improve handling, such as adaptive damping, rear-wheel steering ( borrowed from the Aventador S) and torque vectoring on the rear differential. It has huge wheels and brakes. Standard wheels on the Urus are 21 inches, but for those with a desire for bigger dubs, there are optional 23-inch models. These wheels are stopped by standard carbon ceramic rotors. The fronts are 17.3 inches in diameter, and the rears are 14.5 inches. It has the best weight-to-power ratio of any SUV. Besides having the highest claimed top speed for an SUV, and acceleration on par with the 707-horsepower Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, Lamborghini claims the Urus has the best weight-to-power ratio of any SUV on the market. That ratio, with the SUV's roughly 4,850 pound curb weight and 641 horsepower, is 7.57 pounds per horsepower. It is worth noting that the aforementioned Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is still close with a ratio of 7.59 pounds per horsepower. It can be mostly rear-wheel drive, but not fully. The big Lambo is all-wheel-drive all the time, with its Torsen center differential providing a default torque split of 40 percent to the front, and 60 percent to the rear. This can change all the way up to 87.5 percent to the rear depending on conditions, or it can shift 70 percent of the torque to the front. Its chassis is all steel and aluminum. Unlike the Lamborghini's sports cars that use extensive carbon fiber in the chassis, either for the passenger cell in the case of the Aventador, or for reinforcement as in the Huracan, the Urus has a steel and aluminum chassis. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party.

2015 Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster Review

"Lamborghini Murcielago." That's what I would tell anyone who asked what my favorite car was. Yes, there were easier cars to drive than the wailing wraith from Sant'Agata Bolgnese, and that was partly why I liked it so. It was impossible to see out the back – reversing was easiest done with the door open, sitting on the sill. My head banged the door frame when I checked traffic on the left. The seat made my butt hurt. The cabin ergonomics were based on a design language that humans haven't yet translated. It boiled over in stop-and-go traffic. It was big. Yet it drove like nothing else, with the instant zig-zag reflexes of a mako designed in The Matrix. The Murcielago's thrills weren't laid out on the ground, you had to dig for them with your bare hands. And that's what made it outstanding. When I first drove the Aventador at its launch in Rome, I spent the day blasting around the circuit at Vallelunga. It was so easy to drive – "too easy by half," as Jeremy Clarkson would later say of it – viciously quick, unholy fun, and very good. But it was a little too easy to drive. Which is why the Murcielago remained my favorite car, ever. Until two weeks ago. The Aventador came when the rough-diamond Gallardo was Lamborghini's in-house reference for ease-of-use. But now we have the fire-and-forget Huracan. Having driven one after the other, and on the context of LA streets instead of the smooth and open landscape of Vallelunga or Laguna Seca, I now see the Aventador for what it truly is: the representation of the bull that's on the Lamborghini badge – head-down, horns-out anger. Like the Murcielago, the Aventador is big. It's more than ten inches longer than a Chevrolet Corvette, five inches wider than a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, and 3.5 inches wider than a Dodge Viper. It is also low, an inch lower than the already ground-floor Huracan. I won't pretend to be rational about it: the Aventador says everything I want a car to say. It's the certain, antidotal statement to brief and befuddled everyday lives. The cabin is a cockpit in every sense: close-fitted, button-filled, lit up. I'm five-foot-eleven, and I wear it like a tailored suit. I gave a ride to a guy who's six-foot-three and perhaps 260 pounds, so it can fit much larger frames but I still don't know how he got in or out through that scissor-door opening. The trunk in the Murcielago was big enough to hold a single dream.