Lamborghini Aventador SV 2015 Review

Lamborghini is the master of overstatement, and the new Aventador Superveloce is the loudest, most punch-in-your-face production vehicle the company has ever made.

Just look at the front-end. Clearly the designers were asked to come up with ways to make it look more aggressive than the original Aventador, launched four years ago.

They came up with at least three cartoon-crazy ideas, like a huge splitter, more aggressive and vast cheek holes and a big vertical kind of chin wing that looks like a Transformer sticking its tongue out.

Asked to make a choice, the chief designer didn't bother, and just decided to use all three. The result is a front-end that stops human traffic and overloads mobile-phone cameras. There was an SV painted in Rosso Bia (the Greek god of strength) parked out the front of our hotel in Barcelona and it couldn’t have got more attention if it had Kim Kardashian strapped to the roof.

Much like Kim Nice But Dim, though, it’s the rear-end that really drops people’s jaws. A wing that would look at home on a Le Mans racer is eye catching, but it’s the new rear diffuser – which a Lamborghini expert described as “huge” — that really adds some aggression, plus the new quad downpipes, which replace the slightly ugly gaping mouth exhaust from the original car.

The Aventador coupe also makes do with an integrated wing that lifts out of the car at speed, but that just didn’t provide the kind of downforce the designers were looking for with this track-attack version.

Indeed, they claim that a lot of the eye-catching new features, including new side skirts, and a few you can’t see, like a redesigned underbody, are all about aerodynamic improvements, not just looking good on Instagram.

The figures certainly suggest they succeeded, with vertical downforce increased by 170 per cent and overall aerodynamic efficiency up by 150 per cent. Remember, these figures are against the original Aventador, which is not a car that felt floaty.

The SV’s rear-end is pushed into the ground by that wing — which can be manually adjusted through three different settings — and the diffuser, by up to 110kg of force, compared to just 42kg on the now slightly plain looking original.

And it is this, even more than the car’s more ferocious acceleration, wild looks and straight-line speed, that is the most impressive trick the SV pulls off.

As Lambo boss Stephan Winkelmann puts it: “Speed in a straight line is fun, for a while, but really in driving it is the way you can go through a corner, and come out of it, that is the joy.”

There was no road driving as part of the SV launch, which indicates that it might be too hard for public roads, and almost certainly too fast, but we did get many unforgettable laps of the F1 favourite Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, and through its long, sweeping, high g-force corners the car was a revelation.

Downforce is a wonderful thing, because it gives you the confidence to push beyond what would feel safe in a normal car. As long as your nerve holds you can throw the SV into bends and keep it there with a firm foot on the throttle, and you can then nail that pedal to the floor as soon as you’re past the apex.

The forces on your body through those bends really are prodigious, and yet profoundly good fun.

When you do punch out of a corner and down even the short back straight, the benefits of the weight-saving program - more carbon-fibre, everywhere, basically, and even optional Carbon Skin seats, which weigh 60 per cent less than leather — and the extra grunt are obvious.

In what feels like less than 800m of road, the Aventador SV leapt from 100 to 235km/h with the kind of brutal force that only a naturally aspirated V12 can produce.

Winkelmann helpfully translated “Superveloce” for us as “extremely fast”, and he’s not joking. His beloved old-school V12 super car engine now makes 559kW, while torque remains at 690Nm. With its weight shaved down to 1525kg, its epic power-to-weight ratio helps hurl it to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds, and on to 300km/h in just 24 seconds. Top speed is an entirely believable 350km/h.

Surprisingly, Lamborghini didn’t upgrade the brakes for the SV, but that is perhaps because they were already up to the job, hauling you up from huge speeds repeatedly without fading.

The feeling that you are in a race car rather than something road legal is exacerbated by the interior, which now exposes the carbon-fibre monocoque for you to see, and even the door skins are naked CFRP.

An all-new giant TFT screen flashes bright yellow data at you, and the gear you’re in turns red as you approach your change point, while the whole screen will flash at you in panic if you actually hit the limiter. It’s video-game like, but fantastic, when you actually have time to look at it.

The seats, covered in slashing SV decals of bright hues, are new sporty buckets, but sitting in an actual bucket might be just as comfortable. Words like “firm” and “hard” fall well short of describing these super-thin, almost overly supportive pews, which, while fabulous around a track, would be extremely wearing over any kind of distance.

You can make things even less comfortable, too, by switching your settings to Corsa — Italian for “race” — which takes the shift times of the race-recalibrated automated manual transmission down to just 50 milliseconds, and makes you swear, loudly.

At any kind of speed, gear changes are like karate kicks to your spine and they cause the whole car to buck and make loud bangs.

These noises are as nothing, of course, compared to the general barking, braying and bellowing that comes from the huge donk right behind your ears. When an Aventador SV goes down the straight, conversation in the pits simply ceases, because you can’t hear a thing. It’s that loud.

The new pipes, and a more invigorating tune for the exhaust system, combine to make this possibly the most berserk sounding vehicle Lamborghini has ever produced, which is shouting something.

The SV also benefits from the introduction of Lamborghini Dynamic Steering, which continuously varies your steering ratio depending on speed, steering angle and what mode you’ve selected. We were shown a video of the car setting a sub seven-minute Nurburgring time, split screened against the old car lapping the Green Hell, and it’s obvious how much less input the driver needed on the wheel.

Happily, this doesn’t mean there’s less feel, however, with fantastic weighting and feedback through the wheel. It feels properly hairy-chested — like everything else about the car — and far better than the slightly light, Audi-like steering set up on the new Huracan.

Overall, the Aventador SV is a huge overstatement of intent. A “look how mad we are” to the world, and it puts the 6.5-litre V12, scissor-doored car clearly back at the top of the company’s performance pile, which is just as well because the V10-engined Huracan was nipping at its heels.

Several Australians have already put orders in for their $882,650 share of the 600 that will be made globally — 200 of them for the Asia Pacific region — but you have to wonder if they know what they’re getting themselves in for.

The SV is an amazing, invigorating and even confidence-inspiring track car, which is made almost easy to drive by its incredible grip and aero combination, but it is as hard as falling down stairs on to concrete, so driving one on the road might well be a brutal experience.

Still, it would be worth buying one just so you could park it somewhere and stare at it.

What we liked:
>> The over-the-top styling
>> The aero-assisted handling
>> The noise and everything else about the V12 natmonster

Not so much:
>> The price
>> The brutally hard seats
>> The price

2015 Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 Superveloce price and specs:
On sale: October
Price: $882,650 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 6.5-litre 60-degree V12 petrol
Output: 552kW/690Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed ISR automated manual
Fuel: 16.0L/100km (NEDC)
CO2: 370g/km (NEDC)
Kerb weight: 1525kg
0-100km/h: 2.8 seconds
0-200km/h: 8.6 seconds
0-300km/h: 24 seconds
Top speed: 350km/h-plus
Safety rating: Not tested