ThomasM
[PuristS]
14331
Lamborghini Aventador: V12 Supercar - a successful successor
Lamborghini Aventador V12 Supercar on the track in Sepang - a rightful heir to a long and proud legacy
It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year (September 20th, 2011) since I first had the chance to try the Aventador on the Sepang F1 track in KL, Malaysia.
Since then, there has been plenty of commentary on the new production flagship of the Lamborghini model range, and the market has spoken -
The Aventador is a great commercial success, with the 1000th Aventador built on July 19th, 2012, to be delivered against a long and long ago overbooked order backlog. 1000 units, delivered to end users. In less than one year. With a long backorder on top of that. Stop and think about it - in the context of Lamborghini and their past; in the context of how ultra niche this model is; that fact is mindboggling to an old time Lambophile and exotic performance car enthusiast.
Now that my first impressions have been allowed to ferment and develop over the course of 12 months, helped along by another chance to sanity check my first impressions on the track in Shanghai in October, a month later, followed by extended seat time on the roads of Napa Valley in November, where it was crowned the Robb Report Car of the Year for 2012 (on the road evaluations in November 2011) where have the gut level, instinctive "impressions" settled in?
In brief -
the body is still a knock out - sometimes, an extreme, in your face design such as the Aventador ages with no legs, novelty quickly turning to gimmickry. Not so with the Aventador. Its design language speaks to the future even as it pays homage to the past. It works, and I expect it will age as gracefully as the Diablo, and be 1000x more driveable in the future besides
the ride - who the hell said it could easily and comfortably work as a daily driver, making grocery runs as effortlessly as an A4 Avant?!? Though comfortable for a supercar (or most exotics, for that matter, though not as much as the almost boring McLaren 12C) at most street legal speeds, it is far from cruiser smooth like even the similarly powerful CL65, where one has to check the tach to make sure the engine is still running while at idle. Yeah, yeah, I know - twin turbo vs normally aspirated; 604 (in stock trim) vs 700+ hp; a much lighter body, etc etc etc. But if one is going to make such eye raising statements as "it can comfortably make daily office commutes and weekly grocery runs" the caveats and explanations are just excuses, forcing square pegs into round holes.
Make no mistake about it - the new V12 is powerful, an engineering tour de force and likely to see a long development life, possibly as long and beloved as its predecessor first shown in the early 1960's and evolving until 2010. But it is also high strung and rough (again, compared to the German V12's from M-B AMG and BMW, though I have to admit the extreme performance variants that power the SLR and Pagani and McLaren F1 are also rougher than their more tame units that power the 600, 65, 73, 750, 760, et al...) that for most anyone but the most hardcore performance car fanatic would NOT be comfortable and pleasant for a daily driver. Context is everything and everything is context...
performance and handling - I'm STILL trying to sort out my feelings on this part.
Ciao for now,
TM
ps: I remember someone asked about the tires after some fairly serious laps...
Lamborghini Aventador: V12 Supercar - a successful successor
