Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4: roaring dinosaur with T-Rex engine

Evolution isn’t always for the better. A case in point: this big, brutal dinosaur. Would you prowl city streets in it?

LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR LP700-4

One day, many years ago, a penguin must have landed in the frozen wastelands of Antarctica and thought: “Hmmm. It’s a bit cold but there are no polar bears trying to eat me and the sea is full of fish, so I reckon I’ll stick around.”

Now if we are to believe the teachings of the baby Jesus he’d have lasted about five minutes before freezing to death or being eaten. Luckily there’s such a thing as evolution, which arrived in the snowy wilderness and with a parental sigh took charge of the situation, giving Mr Penguin bigger lungs, a fat tummy and turning his wings into flippers.

We see this kindly benevolence everywhere. When people started to live below sea level in what we now know as Holland, evolution arrived and quietly made sure they grew to be very tall so they’d be OK when the place flooded.

Then there’s Australia. It was designed to be a faraway dustbin for all the animals that were too dangerous to live anywhere else, so evolution had to make sure that when people decided to live there they’d become hardy souls with a belief that anyone who has tear ducts must be a Pom.

I like to think evolution lives on something a bit like Tracy Island, waiting to drop everything and help out when a tortoise decides it wants to live in the sea, or when people decide to keep dogs as pets. Secretly, it thinks: “Why would you want to do that, you imbeciles? Dogs are dangerous carnivores.” But it rocks up anyway and turns what’s basically a wolf into a spaniel with floppy ears.

We see evolution at work in the world of cars too. When we were all called Terry and June, we were happy to drive around in four-door saloons, but one day we woke up, started naming ourselves after various white wines and decided we would only be happy if our car was 5m off the ground and called an SUV.

One day everyone wanted a hot hatchback. We thought they made a great deal of sense. Then we decided for no reason at all that we didn’t want to go quickly, we wanted to save fuel. We are worse than otters, which, of course, started out as fish, decided they liked the land and then decided, just after evolution turned their scales into fur, that they wanted to be fish again.

Despite our otterishness, the car industry has kept up. But not always.

Back in the mid-1960s, Lamborghini decided to put an enormous engine in the middle of a car that was about the same height as a piece of paper. It called it the Miura and the supercar was born.

There have been many imitations over the years but they’ve all adhered to the same basic recipe: dramatic looks, enormous power and, er, that’s it.

Now, however, Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren have taken the unusual step of using hybrid technology to get even more power from their road rockets. Honda is next with a hybrid, all-wheel-drive NSX, and BMW is said to have an improved i8 in the wings.

Lamborghini is a division of Volkswagen, which because of this ludicrous emissions saga will not be spraying much cash around in the foreseeable future. Which means Lambo will have no funds to develop a hybrid of its own. Which in many ways is no bad thing, because what it has got now is the best car it has yet made: the Aventador.

Oh sure, even by dinosaur standards it’s not the best supercar to drive. It feels big and heavy. And if you go for a hot lap of a racetrack, you’d better not even think about doing another, because the brakes will fade and then fail.

Inside, an Aventador is very dramatic, with a starter button that hides under the sort of red flap you normally find over the “fire missile” button in a fighter jet. But if you look at all the stuff carefully, you’ll notice it’s been lifted straight from an Audi TT.

And who cares? Because — let’s be honest, shall we? — nobody has ever bought a supercar because they want to get round the Nurburgring in four seconds. Supercars are capable of going at 300km/h, but they’re bought mainly for doing 1 per cent of that speed in the city. And when it comes to prowling, nothing looks as good as the big Lambo.

Yes, it’s soundly beaten both in a straight line and round a corner by the new breed of hybrid hypercars, but, while they make a range of unusual noises, they can’t compete with the raw, visceral bellow of the T Rex that lives under the Aventador’s engine cover.

And another thing. The new McLaren P1 is very difficult to drive fast. If you make even a tiny mistake, it will kill you. The Lamborghini isn’t like that, thanks to its four-wheel drive system and the fact that it’s more for show than go.

I love this car. I love its clunky, old-skool manners and honest-to-God, shepherd’s-pie approach to the business of getting down low and going quickly.

Will it die in the face of the modern competition? Well, when steam power came along horses were no longer needed. But instead of melting them down — which is what I’d have done — we turned them into pets. And that’s what I hope happens with the Lambo: that people will continue to want it precisely because it suddenly appears lumbering and old-fashioned.

If I were given the choice of any supercar, this is the one I’d buy. I respect and admire the P1. But which would you rather have as a pet: a clever and sophisticated electronic robot? Or a bloody great brontosaurus?

My case rests.

Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4: Supercar

Engine: 6.5-litre V12 petrol

Outputs: 515kW at 8250rpm and 690Nm at 5500rpm

Transmission: Seven-speed robotised manual, all-wheel drive

Price: £260,040 (from$761,500 plus on-road costs)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Verdict: I’ve been to Jurassic World — and I like it.