Lamborghini Urus Performante First Drive Review

Lamborghini is a bit strange. For decades, they have been making high performance super cars and following them up with hardcore, even more special versions dubbed Performante. So the English translation for Performante is literally ‘high performance’, but… aren’t they all high on performance and drama to begin with?

Anyway, here we have the Urus Performante – pronounced “Purr-Four-Maan-Tay” if you want to make them Italians happy. It’s a slightly lightened, slightly more powerful though a lot meaner looking than the regular Urus.

Adding more horsepower, aero bits and go-faster stripes is common practice amongst many European brands but these are far too straightforward for Lamborghini. The Urus Performante sits lower and wider compared to the regular car. More importantly, it looks the business with exposed carbon fiber bodywork. The lower half of the front and rear bumpers, the bonnet, wheel arch cladding, door sills, the lip spoiler and the fins are all forged from carbon fiber. If you wish to go all out, you could ditch the sunroof and go for the fully carbon fiber roof which is part of the optional extras.

The Urus Performante’s cabin is more spice than opulence. Don’t get me wrong, it’s high quality and everything is well put together but at the same time, the cabin looks and feels very purposeful. There is black alcantara everywhere, matte carbon fiber details, red door handles and aluminum trim bits. Like on the outside, there is a lot of visual drama to take in. The infotainment system is Audi-like to use so a little individuality is lost there but overall this Performante version feels plenty special.

The Urus is the most usable car that Lamborghini makes and the Performante is no different. There is a lot of space inside, legroom is generous and you have more than enough headroom to strap on a helmet and be comfortable on track days. You could even daily drive this car and have people with you. It’s a proper four seater. And it’s not just passengers - with over 600-litres of boot space, the Urus Performante will carry their luggage, too.

The brake horsepower figure on the Urus Performante is rated at 666 which is also the number of the devil. That’s 16bhp more from the 4-litre twin-turbo V8 that lurks under the hood. Other big changes include new steel springs, a wider track, lightweight wheels, a new differential and specially developed Pirelli tires. The Akrapovic exhaust which comes as standard is also a lightweight system and overall, the Performante is lighter by 47 kilos. Now that may not sound like much but if you are a track junkie then I believe every additional horsepower or any drop in weight would matter. What you will definitely feel though is the new Rally mode which is exclusive to the Urus Performante.

So do these changes add up to a hair-raising experience behind the wheel? We got a short drive across a work-in-progress race track in Bangalore which turned out to be the perfect venue to test the Rally mode.

With the Rally mode engaged on the dirt track, the Urus Performante is as playful as an adolescent retriever waiting for you to get home at the end of the day. This particular mode allows the Urus to get remarkably sideways on dirt – it’s supernatural how unobtrusively it limits the power to keep you out of trouble but at the same time, makes you feel like a bastardized descendant of Ari Vatanen. In the long corners, the combination of torque vectoring, the Urus’ rear-biased all-wheel drive system and clever electronics worked so seamlessly that I was convinced I was a rally driver making this big old beast dance though it was the Rally mode doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The uprated twin-turbo V8 doesn’t feel very different from the standard Urus though it doesn’t really matter. The Performante is a seriously quick SUV and everything about it is remarkable. The way it accelerates, corners on dirt, gripping and sliding just when you want it to, with all the torque in the world… is simply breathtaking.

If you are fortunate enough to spend Rs 4.22 crore (more like five crore, really, with taxes and optional extras) on your next supercar then I would urge you to get the Urus Performante. Yes, it’s a super SUV, not a supercar and yes, there is a long waiting period but it’s also one of those rare machines that will light up your weekend drives and comfortably take you to meetings on weekdays.

Pictures by Kapil Angane and Lamborghini India