The Lamborghini Urus teaser campaign continues to build up to the car’s December 4th launch. The Urus is expected to use a V8 turbo engine offering over 600bhp and the price should be in the region of $238k but we’ll bring you all the official details as we get them right here.
The latest Urus teaser video extends the promotional series by demonstrating the Lamborghini Urus’ off-road capabilities, specifically showcasing the Terra (which translates to ‘land’) driving mode. This installment follows on from two previous videos focused on two other off-road driving modes on Lamborghini’s SUV – Neve and Sabbia (‘snow’ and ‘sand’).
Toggling between the various driver modes on the Urus’ ANIMA (Adaptive Network Intelligent Management) switch recalibrates the SUV’s engine mapping, suspension and traction management systems through Lamborghini’s driver mode hub. The top three modes on the switch: Strada, Sport and Corsa are found on all current Lamborghinis, whereas the bottom trio are all new off road modes for the Urus.
Recently Lamborghini also released a video of the Urus, on the production line offering a glimpse at the engine. We couldn’t glean any new information from the brief shots of the V8, but we do know it won’t be short on power, with a figure north of 600bhp being touted for the turbocharged unit that will drive all four wheels through a dual-clutch transmission. The video also featured an Urus shell moving through the factory in the early stages of assembly.
Speaking throughout the video is Matteo Ortenzi, chief project management officer of Lamborghini, offering insight into the Urus project and the challenges Lamborghini faced bringing it to fruition. ‘Certainly the biggest difficulty we had during the development of the Urus was maintaining the Lamborghini spirit in the development process’.
Ortenzi goes on to hint at what the Urus means in regards to the firm’s future. ‘It is often being said these days that Urus will be a Lamborghini game changer, and it certainly is, but it is not only a game changer because we are changing our industrial footprint or because we will improve our corporate accounts in the coming years. The Urus was the trigger for a change in mentality within the company. It allowed us to understand what our capabilities are and definitely represents an excellent base for the future, and for achieving new objectives.’
The first teaser featured a heavily camouflaged Urus taking to the desert to demonstrate one of the model’s three off-road driving modes integrated into the world’s first ‘Super SUV’, as Lamborghini has coined it.
Lamborghini’s commitment to producing an SUV marks the changing times and demands of the market – even Ferrari is going build an SUV of sorts according to reports. To keep the Urus on brand, Lamborghini will endow it with serious performance. Interestingly the Urus will sit on the same basic platform as the Porsche Cayenne, extremely capable itself in Turbo guise, so how Lamborghini differentiates and develops the driving experience should be interesting. One way will be through the implementation of Lamborghini’s four-wheel steering system, seen in the Aventador S, which aids agility and handling.
Lamborghini is looking to muscle in – once again – on the competitive high-performance SUV segment. The Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Audi SQ7 and Bentley Bentayga are all rivals from within the VW Group stable, although the Urus is expected to be priced closet to the latter. The BMW X6 M and Mercedes-AMG GLE 63 S 4MATIC Coupe offer impressive performance and take similar off-road coupe forms to the Urus, although they will undercut the Lamborghini by a significant sum.
Lamborghini won’t be chasing massive sales volumes with the Urus straight away. Company boss Stefano Domenicali told Auto Express: ‘We need to be humble. We need to start step by step because it’s a new world for us.’ He continued however by saying that the Urus could account for more than half of Lamborghini’s global sales by 2019. Whether you like the idea of a Lamborghini SUV or not, it should be good news for petrolheads – the capital produced by a big-volume seller will hopefully fund the continued and greater investment in the company’s line of supercars and hypercars. This is the same route Porsche took with the Cayenne, and it’s proved to be one of the German company’s biggest success stories.
Those with an eye on the history books will remember that this isn’t actually Lamborghini’s first SUV. Back in the late eighties, the brand experimented by producing the LM002 – the result of a project to produce a military vehicle. It used the V12 engine from the Countach, and offered the most luxurious interior Lamborghini had ever put in a car – but a combination of sky-high running costs and challenging styling meant it was consigned to the history books by 1993. Lamborghini bosses will be hoping for a rather more successful outcome from the Urus.
This article originally appeared at evo.co.uk