Two little letters mean a lot in Lamborghini land. SV is a badge applied only to the raging bull’s very raging-est versions.
And the Aventador LP 750-4 – the yet-more-rapid version of Sant’Agata’s V12 halo car – rages pretty hard. SV is short for the not-so-little Italian expression Superveloce. Veloce means speed. You can guess the super bit.
To find that speed, the Lambo engineers went deep into the bowels of the mighty 6.5-litre V12. They trimmed its valve timing and variable intake trumpets so it kicks and screams even harder at high revs. It exhales its dragon’s breath through a new free-flowing lightweight exhaust system.
The result is a mighty 551kW (without any kind of forced induction, let’s not forget), up 50bhp from the ‘standard’ Aventador’s 690. Rev limit? 8500rpm. We are trying to imagine the sound. We are failing.
Less weight is another part of the SV’s mighty CV. Some 50kg has been vaporised, leaving a kerb weight of just over 1600kg. That means the overall power-to-weight ratio is 10 percent more favourable than the standard Aventador, a difference that will surely make itself felt.
Lamborghini says it’ll get to 100kph in a brutal 2.8 seconds. The shot from 0-200kph is an even more impressive 8.6 seconds. That’s Porsche 918 territory.
How did they do it? Lambo has become very expert in different carbonfibre techniques. So we have door and sill panels in a superlight form of sheet-moulded carbonfibre. The rear engine cooling intakes and the wing are both fixed, whereas they usually have motors. They too are carbon.
Inside, there are ultra-light carbon seats, no carpets (so you can see the carbon tub), no stereo, and less sound-deadening. To be honest, that’s probably most of your weight saving right there.
Now handling. The pushrod suspension of the Aventador has been given adaptive MR dampers for the SV, which is always good. We’re more chary about the new steering system, which is supposed to have a computer-variable ratio.
At the unveil, Lambo said: ‘the electromechanical Lamborghini Dynamic Steering (LDS)… variably adapts the steering ratio to road speed and to the dynamic mode selected.’ We’ll have to grill them more on this, because it might be a mis-translation.
See, when you have a steering where the ratio is varied – not according to lock but according to speed and other parameters – the result feels unpleasant. No car has ever broken that rule.
We’re hoping that either the launch quote was mistranslated, in which case we’ll have an answer soon, or Lambo has worked a miracle, in which case we’ll have to wait until we drive it.
Finally on the agenda: aero. You’ll have doubtless noticed the rear wing. It has three positions. Your pit crew can adjust it for more downforce or a higher (‘over 350kph’) top speed. It sits above a diffuser the size of a motorway tunnel.
The front splitter helps pin the Aventador SV to the road, too, so in total you have 170 percent more downforce than the standard car. Vast new meshes at the front and rear help take care of the heat rejected by the fiery new engine, and the brakes. At the back, it means you get a clear view of the bowels of the machine.
They’ve ended up with a car that has more edges than an explosion in a cutlery factory. And yet it doesn’t look random: everything ties to everything else. It really does make the standard Aventador look tame. And we don’t have to tell you what a feat that is.
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