Does the Lamborghini Urus feel at home on a track? What else does it do? Stop, tremendously well given the weight - carbon ceramics with 10 (ten) piston calipers are standard. And it rolls, too, despite lowering the ride height in sports mode, stiffening the dampers, and the adoption of 48V active anti-roll bars like you鈥檒l find on its cousins. Sports cars are not typically as comfortable as this on the road, either. Honestly, it鈥檚 fine: it鈥檚 not uncomfortable, and it would be as easy as any big car from this batch to mooch around in. The seats are good. The boot is decent. Ergonomically, it鈥檚 sound. The steering remains light, and responsive. Pedal feel and response is strong. The digital instruments and array of infotainment are of a fine standard. The engine鈥檚 too quiet unless you turn up the suspension to hard, and visibility - because of the high window line - is a bit iffy.
But, then, while parking the cameras are tremendous. Can the Lamborghini Urus cut it off-road? Lamborghini says it wants the Urus to have 鈥渂est in class鈥?handling, with off-road ability 鈥渋n the best class鈥? I tried it on a gravel track carved into some hills and it was great fun: it鈥檚 easy to ride on its torque, it felt agile and you could feel the rear differential straightening its line on corner exit. It is, and I really do mean this, remarkable, in that it is so competent on a circuit, so amenable on the road, and yet still capable of shrugging off-road lumps aside. I鈥檓 genuinely impressed. I don鈥檛 think there are many cars, if any, that can do all of those things better. The only sticking point, then, is whether you thought that was a question worth asking, and worth putting a Lamborghini badge onto its nose when you answered it. Questions, questions: would you be more or less well disposed to this car if it wore a badge you鈥檇 never heard of? Is it fine to know a car is technically excellent but not actually like it very much? This one I know: does it feel like a Lamborghini? Not overtly, but you can see where they鈥檝e tried very hard. But did a Porsche Cayenne feel like a Porsche when that was launched? Not that I can remember, and look how much a part of the furniture that has become. I guess that will be the way it is here too. Man cannot live on naturally aspirated mid-engined cars alone.
There is some squatting and diving under hard acceleration and braking, but at this point, it seems to be an almost intentional and intrinsic Land Rover quality. To be fair, the affect those 21-inchers have on the Sport's ride comfort aren't massive. This is quite a smooth rider thanks to its standard air suspension, adaptive dampers and active roll control. There is some squatting and diving under hard acceleration and braking, but at this point, it seems to be an almost intentional and intrinsic Land Rover quality, a designed-in character-preserving foible. Where the Sport really impresses, though, is how it feels in the bends. For a 5,100-pound SUV, its handling is both sharp and neutral. Throw the Range Rover Sport into a bend, and it takes a set and claws through the turn. Switch to Dynamic mode, and the suspension hunkers down and the torque vectoring kicks in, switching up the 50/50 split and allowing even more power to be put down upon corner exit.
What's surprising is that even the feedback remains fairly impressive. You don't know exactly what the grip levels are like, but you have a pretty fair idea of how hard you can push before things get expensive. Normally, at this point, I'd mention the off-road prowess of the Sport. Unfortunately, being December, I didn't have a chance to go off road (Ewing's review has a great recap of the Sport's off-road chops). I did, however, test the Sport out in some slick, icy, white stuff and found it more than up to the task. This was a seriously sure-footed steed on Michigan's icy roads, whether manually switched to Grass/Gravel/Snow or left in Auto. The Sport's newfound sense of agility is provided not just by this generation's aluminum-intensive chassis and body construction, it's also aided by its steering. The electric power-assisted rack feels rather natural in its weighting, building progressively from its somewhat light on-center effort and into something with some degree of heft behind it.
You'll still know you're driving a 5,100-pound vehicle when working the Sport's tiller, but it never feels like a real hindrance. While the steering remains light on center, it's not easily swayed by potholes or imperfections, lending nicely to the chassis' overall sense of stability. Feedback isn't quite as good as a Porsche Cayenne, but there's sufficient chatter from the steering to know what the front wheels are doing - you can tell enough about the road surface to make really informed steering inputs. Opt for the Supercharged V8 Sport, and you'll get the most aggressive braking package on offer - 15-inch front rotors and 14.3-inch rears with red-painted Brembo calipers. Braking was, not surprisingly, very confident. As I said above, there are a number of very good arguments in favor of the six-cylinder. I discovered one of them, the V8's fuel economy, first hand. It's possible to return the V8's 14-mile-per-gallon city EPA estimate, but I'm not wholly certain how anyone might net the 19-mpg highway figure. My average sat around 15 mpg, thanks in no small part to my heavy right foot and the big engine's ear-pleasing racket. I suspect if driven civilly, 16 or even 17 mpg is possible. At 17 mpg city and 23 highway, the V6 is rated significantly better, but either way, this is a vehicle for OPEC magnates, not Greenpeace supporters. Pricing is the other argument against the supercharged V8. 79,100. Of course, that figure can climb rapidly, thanks to options like larger wheels, a healthy array of premium paints and some optional extras and packages. 1,800). Land Rover also was nice enough to add a pair of packages. 110,400, the Sport is almost something of a value play. It's this bizarre bargain that would put me behind the wheel of one of these Solihull SUVs were I doing the shopping.
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