Lamborghini Aventador SVJ roadster review: a fire-spitting monster
The new Lamborghini Aventador SVJ roadster is a towering, thunderous, fire-spitting monster.
Ferruccio Lamborghini started wi’ nowt. But he did have a shrewd mind, so, after the war, he realised Italy would need to get moving. He therefore cobbled together a few bits and pieces from British vehicle manufacturer Morris and pretty soon he had a tractor. Never mind that you had to start it with petrol then switch to diesel before setting off, it was a machine. And Italians like machines, especially when you can use them to grow wine.
Having made a few bob from his tractors, Ferruccio started dabbling with oil heaters and air-conditioning systems before deciding to have a crack at cars. He had this mad idea that you could mount a V12 engine sideways in the middle of a car, behind the driver. And it turned out he was right. You could. So in 1966, along came the Miura – the world’s first mid-engine supercar. Its aerodynamics were so poor that at about 130km/h it would try to take off. But it looked sensational and, actually, that’s what people mostly want from a supercar. Everything else sort of doesn’t matter.
This was an idea Ferruccio pushed further with the car that replaced the Miura: the Countach. It had steering set in concrete, the sort of clutch God uses to start galaxies and the all-round visibility of a postbox. But in 1971 it came into the world with the impact an Apache gunship would have had at the Battle of Hastings. It was the ultimate poster car, a trailblazer for Farrah Fawcett’s right nipple and the Athena tennis girl.
After this, though, things started to go wrong. Thanks to a revolution in Bolivia (a big market for his tractors) and the oil crisis, Ferruccio decided to spend more time working on his unique, twin-Lambo-engined Riva Aquarama speedboat. So the tractor business was snapped up by an Italian rival and the car operation by various smooth-looking Swiss types.
There followed a period of great turmoil, and terrible cars, until, eventually, Lamborghini ended up in the hands of Audi. The result of this marriage was the Aventador and, let’s not beat about the bush, it was easily the most supercar-ish of all the supercars. It’s what The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again is to the world of rock music. Definitive. Everything else is just a copy.
It’s a car I know well. I’ve maxed an Aventador round the fearsome Nardo test track in Italy. I drove one on the hill climb in Switzerland that very nearly claimed the life of Richard Hammond. And I spent two happy days thundering one around my favourite racetrack, Imola. There’s one thing I can tell you. It is not a racing car. It does not like being on tracks. Ferruccio would approve of that. He once crashed his Fiat into a restaurant while competing in the Mille Miglia and for ever after nursed a dislike of motorsport.
Lamborghini has flirted with it a few times. It even made a Formula One engine in the late 1980s, but its cars are not built to take chequered flags. If you try, the brakes will fade, then fail. Yes, they may have carbon ceramic discs these days, but the heat still has to go somewhere. What the Aventador does very well is “being a car”. I once drove one all the way up Italy, and it was quiet and easy and civilised. And that’s always been the Aventador niggle. Because Lambos shouldn’t be easy. They should be bastards.
Which is why I was delighted to take delivery of the new limited-edition Aventador SVJ Roadster. It’s wider than the standard car and has a revised exhaust system with monstrous tailpipes located at the precise head height of a following cyclist. There’s also a new electronic aerodynamic system that changes the shape of the car as you drive. So on the straights it’s smooth and slippery, and through the corners it becomes heavy and fat with air to improve grip. There’s lots of mechanical grip too, thanks to four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering.
Couple all this to a mercifully unturbocharged V12 engine that produces a volcanic 566kW and you have a car that can, and did, lap the Nürburgring in six minutes and 44 seconds. No production car has gone round faster than that.
I would like, however, to meet the man who drove it round the Nürburgring, because one thing’s for sure: he wasn’t man-shaped. I am man-shaped, so getting inside was a five-minute job. Feet first: get them both under the brake pedal into the far corner of the footwell. Now, right arm on the road, ease your arse in backwards, tucking your head into your chest until you hear your spine start to crack. If people are watching, you can be assured they will laugh at you.
It’s easier when the roof is off,a simple job that requires only two laps of the car. But when it’s off and stored, it fills the front luggage compartment. And when you put it back on, you need to be careful to do the job properly or the passenger seat will fill with water, which will cause your girlfriend to do a lot of swearing. Well, mine did.
Her mood wasn’t improved when she found there was no glovebox or even door pockets. There’s nowhere to put anything. Even your head. I therefore had to get out of the car, onto my hands and knees – it’s the only way – to remove my coat and jumper. This made me very cold, but at least meant I could lean back just enough to get my head inside.
Immediately the seat started to squeak noisily against the bulkhead, so to stop that happening I slid it forward a tad. Which meant I could no longer indicate left, because my knee was in the way. And there was an incredible smell of natural gas. People online say this comes from the brakes, but people online say veganism is a worthy lifestyle choice, so they’re to be ignored. It’s not the brakes. Maybe there are tanks on board to give the exhaust cloud that distinctive blue glow as you drive along. I don’t know. But the smell is pig-farm bad.
The ride, however, is worse. It’s the worst of any car I’ve ever driven. It feels like there is no suspension at all, which means that whenever you go over even the smallest bump, your head hits the roof.
Other things? Well, the Aventador is almost 10 years old now, so its Audi-based control system is Motorola 8900 backward. And the gearbox has a single-clutch system that Alexander the Great once called old-fashioned. Certainly, this is a car that accelerates from 0 to 100km/h a damn sight faster than it changes from first to second.
The car was so bad, in fact, that I hardly drove it. It hurt too much to get inside, it hurt when I managed it, and it hurt to get out again.
All of which means Lambo is back to doing what it does best. Because this is a towering, thunderous, fire-spitting monster. A howling blend of savagery and craziness, all wrapped up in a body that’s more mad than the maddest thing ever to come from Hollywood’s sci-fi CGI boys.
Lambo, then, has made another poster car. The best poster car of all time. I want one so much, it hurts. But I’d never actually drive it. For going to the shops, I’d use something ordinary. Like a Ferrari.
Lamborghini Aventador SVJ roadster
Engine: 6.5-litre V12 (566kW/720Nm)
Average fuel: 16 litres per 100km
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic all-wheel drive
Price: $1,042,286
Rating: ★★★
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