GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 Superveloce
More power, less weight, no turbos as Lamborghini angries up the Aventador formula.The halls of Geneva might ring with talk of supercars with turbochargers and hybridised electric boosting – but not at Lamborghini.
Determined to stick with the instant throttle response of its naturally-aspirated engines for as long as it can, Lamborghini unveiled its heavy hitting Aventador LP750-4 Superveloce in Geneva just to prove its point.
In a typically Lamborghini two-fingered salute to the hybrid hypercars of McLaren, Ferrari and even Koeniggseg, the Aventador LP750-4 SV is an Aventador pushed further down its narrowly focused performance pipe.
It has had 50kg removed, 50 horsepower added and time shaved off its acceleration times everywhere.
Now with 552kW of power and 690Nm of torque from its naturally-aspirated 6.5-litre V12, the 1525kg Aventador LP750-4 SV is Lamborghini’s best indication yet that it will continue to do what it does best, for as long as legislation allows.
“People know that the Lamborghini DNA is naturally aspirated engines with great responsiveness and sound,” Lamborghini’s engineering boss, Maurizio Reggiani said.
“We did the Asterion concept last year, and that shows we are thinking about other solutions, but while we can do the kind of cars people love and know us for, with the kind of throttle response only a naturally-aspirated engine can give you, that’s what we will do.
“Turbochargers would not fit into our engine bays if we did them properly and if you add electric boosting, then you need to package it. It also adds weight and then you need even more power to cover the accelerating of that weight, and then you need to stop it and that adds more weight.
“So this is what we want to do, right now. This is the maximum we can do today in production.”
And, for most, that maximum will be enough. It will shoot the Aventador LP750-4 SV to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds. The sprint from 100km/h to 200km/h takes only 5.8 seconds and Reggiani refuses to quote a top speed, saying instead that it will reach beyond 350km/h.
That’s despite a monster carbon-fibre rear wing that can be moved between three different fixing angles and two different front wings (as Lamborghini prefers to call them) in the nose.
“The new Aventador Superveloce continues the Lamborghini tradition of SV models,” Lamborghini President and CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, said.
“The original Aventador was presented four years ago and the Superveloce pays homage to its passionate owners, whose enthusiasm has resulted in the biggest commercial success ever of a Lamborghini V12 super sports car.
“The number of Aventadors we need to build for the entire life cycle of the car has already been built.”
The Aventador LP750-4 is a car that smacks everywhere of Lamborghini refining, honing and fiddling with concepts it’s intimately familiar with and the studious avoidance of anything all new.
It hasn’t deployed the Audi-sourced dual fuel injection system, preferring to stay with indirect fuel injection for the 6498cc, 60-degree V12. And Lamborghini is allergic to turbocharging.
Instead, it has relied on tweaks to the variable valve timing and the variable intake system, along with an all-new, lightweight exhaust system to generate the extra power at its 8400rpm peak. The engine now revs out to 8500rpm, though the torque peak arrives at an earlier 5500rpm.
The new exhaust system, which can be seen as four dark pipes exiting the centre of the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce’s tail, is also claimed to improve the engine’s responsiveness, thanks to its reduced back pressure.
The car’s handling envelope should benefit from the biggest technical steps on the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce, though.
The first of those, the Magneto Rheological Suspension (magnetic damping) was pre-engineered into the Aventador four years ago and was scheduled to arrive in a two-thirds cycle upgrade. Expect it to trickle into the mainline Aventador in a year or two.
The new damping system complements the Aventador’s radical race-style pushrod suspension system, with each wheel individually damped in cornering via changes in electric current through the magnetised damping fluid. Lamborghini claims this results in a flatter cornering stance and faster responses, as well as countering the Aventador’s tendency to dive under brakes.
The second big step is the addition of electro-mechanical steering (dubbed Lamborghini Dynamic Steering) that debuted on the Huracan.
The system changes the steering ratio depending on the road speed or it can adjust to suit the driving mode (in the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce’s case, that’s the same Strada, Sport or Corsa modes as the standard car).
To make it even sharper, Lamborghini has decreased the unsprung mass of the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce by giving it lightweight forged alloy rims.
The 20-inch front rims are wrapped in Pirelli P Zero Corsa 255/35 ZR20 rubber, while the rears use 355/25 ZR21 tyres to combat the rear-biased (43:57) weight distribution.
Carbon-ceramic brakes are standard, with 400mm x 38mm units and six-piston callipers up front and 380mm x 38mm units at the back, clamped by four-piston callipers. Lamborghini claims it will stop from 100km/h in just 30 metres.
The SV retains its all-wheel drive system, which shuffles the drive between the axles with the Haldex 4 system that has been superseded in the Huracan, yet it is still regarded as enough for Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce duties.
The rear diff has a mechanical locking system, while the front differential has an electronic lock, governed by the car’s skid-control system.
While the Huracan uses a dual-clutch transmission, the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce uses the unique ISR transmission to move between its seven gears. Criticised for its brutality in the fastest Corsa mode, it is still the fastest auto-shifting manual gearbox on the market, though that is a fast-shrinking competition.
A lot of the car’s 50kg weight reduction has come from stripping out its interior to reveal its carbon-fibre tub, which is mostly obscured in the standard Aventador.
There are also new carbon-fibre shells for the seats, carbon-fibre inner door panels and it’s almost as notable for what’s missing. Lamborghini has stripped it of its infotainment system, its carpets and its swathes of noise insulation (all of which it will put back if you ask nicely, and will even do it for free).
It will be the first car to use Lamborghini’s Carbon Skin material, which is a flexible woven carbon-fibre material the brand first trialed in very expensive computer bags for its board members. It is extremely light and will be used in the Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce’s inner roof and parts of the cockpit.
There’s a new instrument cluster, with an entirely new TFT screen dominated by the colour yellow, while an rpm indicator and shift light is bright blue.
Other tweaks include new aluminium door panels and rear quarter panels done in SMC superlight composite.
The aerodynamic fiddles are obvious, too, with two front splitters (one in black carbon-fibre and the other one painted) giving the Aventador a 170 per cent rise in downforce for no additional drag.
The nose also includes larger brake inlets, too, while the Aventador’s movable engine air-inlet ducts have given way to fixed carbon-fibre versions.
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