Brutally powerful and obscenely flamboyant, the Aventador is unburdened by reality. Crazy expensive and crazy fast, it’s capable of amazing performance without feeling like it’s going to spin out into a ditch, which is refreshing in a supercar. Available as a coupe (for now), it has a 6.5-liter 730-hp V-12, a 7-speed automated manual transmission and all-wheel drive. For the ultimate, the Superveloce has 740 hp and a claimed top speed of 217 mph. In our testing, it did 0-60 mph in 2.7 seconds.
The Italian in the driver’s seat could have fallen from the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Perfectly tailored suit, meticulously cropped hair, runway gaze everywhere he looks. As he races through Valencia, Spain, he turns another roundabout into a shallow chicane, powers down the straight, and grabs the next gear with fingers wrapped in a leather driving glove. Avicii’s sugary club pop plinks out the soundtrack to a scene so stereotypically Italian—so perfectly Lamborghini.
The newfound dexterity stems from a rear-wheel steering system that can nudge the rear wheels up to 1.5 degrees in the opposite direction of the fronts during low-speed maneuvers. It chops the amount of steering input required from the driver, a fact that’s especially prominent in hairpin curves and in parking-lot maneuvers, where it makes the difference between rolling your wrists and crossing your arms. The rear steering also makes the car slightly more neutral, although it doesn’t eliminate the Aventador’s natural proclivity for understeer. With all-wheel drive and stickier, redesigned Pirelli P Zero rubber, the big Lambo resists power-on oversteer, but lift off the throttle at the cornering limit and the Aventador slowly rotates into a drift. It all adds up to an Aventador that is more sensitive and better attuned to the driver’s inputs. The rear end wriggles under hard braking, the steering issues more immediate commands, and the throttle wants to be tickled just so through the corners.
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