First Drive review: Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce (2015)

2015 Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce at a glance

• Handling: ★★★★★
• Performance: ★★★★★
• Design: ★★★★★
• Interior: ★★★☆☆
• Practicality: ★☆☆☆☆
• Costs: ★★★☆☆

SLIGHTLY tired of your 2011 Lamborghini Aventador? Feeling that its 690bhp engine doesn’t quite cut the mustard for you the way it used to? Noticing that its road-incinerating acceleration no longer squeezes your kidneys as it once did? Time to bin it, then, and drop more than a quarter of a mill on this new Superveloce version.

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You won’t need to be fluent in the language to know that Superveloce is Italian for “insanely, stomach-liquidisingly, crazy-as-a-frog fast”. Lamborghini has previously lowered this distinctive badge of madness onto the Miura, the Diablo and the Murcielago. And now it’s the Aventador’s turn to become not just a low, wide, scissor-doored head-swiveller but also a game-ending Top Trump card.

The naturally aspirated V12 engine now manages to produce a lunatic 740bhp. The quickest production Lamborghini yet, it reaches 60mph almost before you have finished fastening your seatbelt and its top speed is well north of 200mph.

It is — as Lamborghini is fond of saying — “emotional” and many of those emotions stem from the car’s admirable weight loss; 50kg has come off the original model, thanks to the use of still more carbon fibre.

The dieting programme also extends to the removal of such fripperies as an infotainment system and carpets. Sure, Lamborghini is saying, you can have those things put back as optional extras as part of the personalisation programme — and indeed the blazing-red model that I took on to the sun-drenched Formula One track at Barcelona last week, muttering prayers all the while, at least had a hi-fi.

But clearly the implication is that if you’re the kind of person who is ready to compromise the purity of the car’s power-to-weight ratio just so you can listen to Adrian Chiles on Radio 5 Live, then you are a barbarian on whom race-ready Italian engineering is entirely wasted. (By getting rid of Chiles and the other fripperies, by the way, the power-to-weight ratio has been increased by 10%.)

“Don’t worry,” said the track guide, as we idled in the pit lane. “You can’t make a mistake in this car.”

“You haven’t seen my driving,” I felt like replying, but I was already off, the engine barking behind me in the manner of an agitated dog.

It goes without saying that the next few minutes went by quickly, along with the long-limbed Catalunya race track. Depress the accelerator hard and your ear canals attempt to meet each other in the middle of your head. Consequently, everyone going fast at the wheel of an Aventador SV looks as if they have been reimagined by Tim Burton.

The redesigned, more aerodynamic front end was snapping along like a predatory fish while the upgraded automated manual transmission ripped through the seven gears as if it were a strongman destroying a phone book. (Lamborghini reckons it offers the fastest gear-shift in the world, and who are we to dispute it?)

Your downforce is 170% up on the standard Aventador’s — aided by that huge wing nailed to the boot — and, as you barrel along, you can almost feel it forcing air pressure the length of the car, through to the steering wheel, down your arms and into your chest.

And the track guide was right. Contrary to Lamborghini’s reputation for the kind of uncontrollability that makes life at 140mph interesting, the adaptive steering and the supervisory electronic stability controls do a reassuring amount of clamping the car to the road. At any rate, bits of kerb, tarmac and grandstand kept flying at me in an unhelpful manner, but I came back safe.

Given the high premium Lamborghini sets on design, the instrument panel still looks bafflingly like something from an arcade game. Then again, it’s hardcore enough to include a G-force monitor, though if you can read that while you’re going along, one would humbly submit, you’re not generating enough G-force.

Also properly hardcore are the car’s consumption and emissions figures but let’s also credit Lamborghini with planting a lot of compensatory trees in various Italian parks, to the point where it will become a certificate-holding carbon-neutral company later this year.

So where do you sign? That could be the problem. Lamborghini intends to build 600 Aventador SVs over the next two years. Given that 500 of those are said to have been earmarked since the car’s announcement, your chances of acquiring one are diminishing quickly — not least when you consider the rumour that some of that production capacity could get set aside somewhere along the line for a roadster version. Upgraders: you’d better get a shift on.

2015 Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce specifications

• Engine: 
  6498cc V12, naturally aspirated
• Power: 
  740bhp @ 8400rpm
• Torque: 507Ib ft @ 5500rpm
• Transmission: 7-speed ISR automatic
• Performance: 
  0-62mph: 2.8sec
• Top speed: 217mph
• Fuel: 17.6mpg
• CO2: 370g/km
• Road tax band: M (£505 a year)
• Price: 
  £315,078
• Release date: 
  Order now

Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce rivals

Bentley Continental GT3-R, £237,500

• For Fast, capable and bombproof
• Against Black-and-green interior

Ferrari F12, £238,938

• For V12 matches the Aventador’s power
• Against No lightweight version available

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