2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante review: First international drive

Lamborghini has been dragged reluctantly into the age of electrification. Or at least, that’s the message gleaned from talking with Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann at the launch of the Italian brand’s flagship SUV, the Urus Performante.

Ask him directly if he’s excited about an electric future for Lamborghini, a brand whose very essence has been about power and performance, sound and yes, a furious explosion of internal combustion, and Winkelmann is typically forthright.

“What I like, doesn’t matter,” he tells me emphatically. “We have to adapt to the situation, and we have to be very focussed on what to do and also accept what the legislator is proposing.”

And that means electrification is coming to Lamborghini, whether we like it or not.

But, before then, the Raging Bull isn’t going down without one last massive, loud and explosive symphony of speed and sound.

It might seem incongruous that what is likely to be the second-last petrol-only model from Lambo is an SUV. Even more incongruous is that this SUV is a balls-out performance model that’ll leave you weak at the knees after a stint behind the wheel.

But, that’s exactly what the 2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante is, and exactly what it does.

To find out if Lamborghini can indeed turn an SUV, admittedly and in its own words, a 'super SUV', into a track day weapon, we blagged an invitation to the last-of-breed's global launch in Italy.

The scene is the Autodromo Vallelunga, a technical yet flowing 4.085km, 15-turn, racetrack just north of Rome. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the Urus, the original launched at the same venue back in 2018.

Since then, Lambo’s super SUV has gone on to become the company’s best-selling model, with sales in excess of 21,000 globally, around 84 per cent of which have gone to buyers new to the Lamborghini brand. The Urus is, in every way, a conquest.

But, can you take an already tempestuous super SUV and turn it into a genuine track day weapon?

The short answer is, yes!

The long answer follows.

The Lamborghini Urus, even in its most basic trim – and it’s hard to think of any Lambo as ‘basic’ – redefined what it means to be an SUV.

With 478kW and 850Nm from its twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8, the 'original gangster' Urus was one of the world’s fastest production SUVs at launch, completing the sprint from standstill to 100km/h in an eye-watering 3.6 seconds along the way to a top speed of 305km/h. This, from a vehicle weighing in at around 2200kg.

To create the Urus Performante, Lambo’s engineers, headed by self-confessed car nut and Chief Technical Officer, Rouven Mohr, started with a weight-saving spree, shaving 47kg off the regular Urus. The new model tips the scales at a more streamlined 2150kg.

Carbon-fibre panels replace aluminium for a saving of 7.3kg. New alloy wheels and tyres shave off another 6.3kg while lightweight materials in the cabin save another 5kg.

And then there’s the titanium Akrapovic exhaust setup, that not only slims down the Performante by a further 10.4kg, but also adds a sonic boom to the its soundtrack, not that the symphony of the original Urus was found wanting.

But the Urus’s diet is only one part of the story with performance gains found in several key areas.

Under the bonnet, the same 4.0-litre (3996cc) twin-turbo V8 found in the original Urus now makes 666hp (490kW) and 850Nm. That’s not a huge power boost over the regular Urus but when allied with the Performante’s diet, a 38 per cent reduction in drag (thanks to a redesigned front end and a new spoiler mounted high on the tailgate), the result is an improvement in straight-line acceleration (0-100km/h is now completed in 3.3s while standstill to 200km/h is dispatched in 11.5s).

Incidentally, we asked Mohr about the deliciously satanic 666hp extracted from the twin-turbo bent-eight and whether it was a deliberate tweaking of the Performante’s power output.

“Sometimes, we like to be a little bit not too serious,” he tells me. “And there’s a little twinkle in the eye. So for sure, we thought it was a cool idea. Therefore, we say ‘okay, let’s do a 666’.”

But, the Urus Performante’s story isn’t just about acceleration and straight-line speed. It’s also about how it puts all that power to the ground, and how it handles the unshakeable laws of physics that are the enemy of 2.135 tonnes of high-riding metal (and carbon-fibre) navigating corners at speed.

To help keep the hulking SUV grounded, Lambo’s engineers ditched the regular Urus’s air suspension for a stiffer steel spring setup, resulting in a 20mm lower ride height and more assured handling. Adding just a smidge more aggression to the Urus’s stance, track has been increased by 16mm front and rear, the sum effect a wider, lower and more purposeful looking Urus.

It's one thing to look good, another to back up a killer profile with the kind of performance and handling usually reserved for low-slung sportscars, such as those made by, um, Lamborghini.

That’s why underneath you’ll find a new Torsen centre diff that is happy to playfully send more torque to the rear wheels and an active rear diff that apportions torque from side to side to the wheel that needs it most.

That’s why you’ll find four-wheel steering – where the rear wheels turn in the same direction as the fronts at higher speeds and counter to the fronts at slower – adding to the big SUV’s on-paper track credentials while super sticky Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tyres can be optioned for added track day grip.

So, the spec sheet says this should be an accomplished track day weapon, capable of hustling from corner to corner with assurance and alacrity. But, my frontal lobe, the part of the brain that deals with reason and logic says ‘yeah, nah’.

Still, we’re here to find out whether engineering trumps logic so it is with a sense of amusement and a little trepidation, more than anything else, I slide behind the wheel of the Urus Performante in pitlane.

The Autodromo Vallelunga north of Rome is a highly technical circuit, with 15 corners around its 4.085km length. The shortish main straight leads into a flat-out fifth-gear right-hander before switching back to the left for the run down into what is the start of the track’s tight technical section, the real test of the Performante’s newfound ambitions.

The news here is good, both in terms of raw speed and the ability of the Urus to remain true to the track. Acceleration is nothing short of stupendous, the response from the twin-turbo V8 eye-watering and the precise and intuitive shifts from the eight-speed automatic transmission razor sharp.

Use the paddle-shifters for greater control and gear changes are even more electric, each pull on the steering-wheel mounted paddle eliciting smooth transitions to an accompaniment of a raucous V8 that howls with pleasure at being unleashed.

Tip the 2150kg SUV into that first fifth-gear right-hander and your frontal lobe screams at you in protest. But my frontal lobe lives outside the world of high-performance engineering, a world where men and women much smarter than me can, and do, extract almost otherworldly performance gains from the seemingly incongruous.

Yes, changing direction at 217km/h as the V8 roars like a marauding Viking, certainly gets your attention. But, the Urus is more than up to the task, simply never straying from its line, feeling neither top-heavy nor unwieldy.

That’s only enhanced in the confines the tighter sections of the Vallelunga circuit, the big SUV not only proving capable, but also composed and agile. It's remarkable how un-SUV-like the Performante feels when driven with purpose. It really shouldn't be like this, this fast, composed and nimble beast. But it is and my brain needs recalibrate and quickly if I want to extract the best from a vehicle that is more giant supercar than SUV.

With each successive lap, I overcome my sense of 'this is silly' and start to enjoy the Performante's unflinching honesty around the track. It doesn't put a wheel wrong, never feels out of place. Its limits are, in every way, far greater than those possessed by most mortals including me. And what that allows is for a driver to fully engage with its terrifying-on-paper performance and translate it to its un-natural habitat in a way that inspires confidence and elicits whoops of delight from behind the wheel.

The super-sticky Pirelli tyres play their grippy part in this dance of speed and adhesion, while the four-wheel steering ensures the 5137mm long SUV corners like a much smaller car.

On a perfectly smooth racetrack, the steel-sprung SUV feels composed and stable. Whether that translates to on-road manners we won’t know until we get to drive the Performante on the road.

But, what we do know is that the Lamborghini Urus Performante is a capable track day weapon, able to be pushed for successive laps at speeds that defy reason, and with an ability to corner that defies logic.

It feels planted, it feels secure, it feels blisteringly quick by the seat of the pants as well as by the rapidly rising numbers on the digital speedo, and it can stop with reassurance thanks to carbon-ceramic discs – measuring a monstrous 440mm at front and 370mm out back.

On those brakes, not only did they provide reassuring stopping power each and every time – they also showed no sign of fading over the course of the day where our test car completed around 36-40 laps of high-speed hijinks that required, at times, a big step on the left pedal.

After my own 12 laps behind the wheel – split into three sessions of four laps each – I came away marvelling at the engineering that has gone into turning an SUV into a bone fide track weapon. My core tenets of reason and logic were jettisoned somewhere out there on the Vallelunga circuit, a reminder that not everything needs to make sense.

The Urus Performante’s Rally mode doesn’t make sense either, but it is hella fun. A short two-lap loop of a purpose-built rallycross track located in a paddock just a short walk down a 2000-year-old stretch of Roman road adjacent to the racetrack, demonstrated the ‘utility’ in SUV.

Rally mode softens off the dampers a touch and loosens up some gravel-friendly wheelspin, allowing for plenty of opposite lock cornering that is a ton of fun. But, before things can get out of hand, the electronic nannies intervene to make sure the Urus is pointed in something resembling the right direction and the right way up.

As a novelty, it’s a hoot but the reality is, no owner will ever likely their hand at rallycross in their $465,876 plus on-road costs super SUV. Nice to know you could, though, and another feather in the cap of the Performante’s incongruity.

The Lamborghini Urus Performante remains unrated by us here at Drive for now, our short track test not a sufficient test bed to judge Lambo's show-stopping SUV on all of its merits. However, if I was to judge it purely on its capabilities on track, its'a 10 out of 10.

And that’s the thing about the 2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante. It’s a vehicle that, on paper, makes no sense. But treat it like the engineers and designers intended it to be treated and the surprises come faster than the braking markers down Vallelunga’s short main straight.

It’s a formidable vehicle, one that can and should proudly wear, not only the Lamborghini Raging Bull, but also the Performante badge.