Lamborghini has pulled the camouflage off the Urus Performante, the faster, harder-edged version of the company's SUV, fresh from its record attempt on the storied Pikes Peak hillclimb course in the United States.
Revealed at Monterey Car Week in the California, the Performante features more aggressive styling with lashings of carbon fibre, as well as tweaked suspension and steering to make the driving experience more engaging. Added to that is an extra 16hp, bring the Urus' total power output to a devilish 666hp.
Styling changes
The front-end treatment makes the Performante look a lot more purposeful than the standard Urus with the bonnet made from lightweight carbon fibre and featuring bigger cooling ducts. That bonnet comes as standard in the car's body colour, but can be optioned with a contrasting square of visible black carbon fibre in the middle.
The front bumper and splitter (made of carbon fibre) are also new, with revised air intakes increasing engine cooling and reworked air curtains channelling air through the front wheel wells.
As on the Lamborghini Huracan Performante and Super Trofeo, the Urus Performante's roof can again be optioned in contrasting carbon fibre and the whole car is lower and wider thanks to the suspension tweaks and the fact that the company has increased the track by 16mm - not much, but enough to require a small extension to the wheel arches to enable them to accommodate the 22- and 23-inch wheels.
At the rear, a new spoiler helps increase downforce at the back by 38 per cent, according to Lamborghini, while the lower rear bumper and diffuser (you guessed it, in carbon fibre) and Akrapovič sports exhaust are also new.
Performance
The use of all that carbon fibre results in a saving of 47kg of weight compared to a standard Urus and, when combined with some extra tuning to coax a full 666hp out of the twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 engine, straight-line performance has improved, albeit marginally. Maximum torque remains the same as a regular Urus at 850Nm, but that lower weight and extra power has resulted in a 0-100km/h time of 3.3 seconds, which is three tenths of a second faster than a standard model.
Rather than an outright speed and acceleration boost then, it appears that the purpose of the Performante's modifications is actually to produce a more engaging car to drive. The new steel springs that lower the Performante's ride height by 20mm are also stiffer; thanks to the aero tweaks, downforce is up all-round by eight per cent; and a new variant of Pirelli's Trofeo R semi-slick track tyre is optimised, according to both companies, to deliver performance best suited to a heavy, fast SUV like the Urus.
Going off-road
Nor is the Performante designed strictly to stay on the tarmac. In addition to the usual Strada, Sport and Corsa driving modes, there's now a new one - Rally - designed for looser surfaces such as dirt tracks, which optimises the damping and anti-roll settings for going quickly over rougher terrain.
Earlier this month, before its official unveiling, the Urus Performante set a time of 10:32.064 over the twisting Pikes Peak road, home to the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which rises to the 4,302m summit of the eponymous mountain in Colorado. That is nearly 17 seconds faster than the record in the production SUV class, held since 2018 by the Bentley Bentayga. The assault on the mountain was largely meaningless though as it was conducted in perfect conditions and not over the course of the race weekend, meaning that the Bentayga's record still officially stands.
First deliveries of the Lamborghini Urus Performante will begin before the end of the year.