Final Flourish

Lamborghini Sends the Aventador Off With the Most Powerful Engine It Has Ever Produced. We Get Behind the Wheel of What Could Be the Last Non-electrified Raging Bull Flagship

- Gautam Sharma

Turning up at a racetrack to flog the living daylights out of a 760bhp (770PS) supercar constitutes a magnificent day at the office, but it also triggers a mild degree of a trepidation. Particularly as we’ve just been informed the newly laid tarmac at the Circuito do Estoril offers very little in the way of grip. There’s as yet no rubber laid down on the track, and residual oil from the fresh asphalt has seeped to the surface under the hot sun.

But, what the heck, this is no ordinary supercar. This is Lamborghini’s brand-new Aventador SVJ (Super Veloce Jota). “Super Veloce” is Italian for “Super Fast”, while Jota is Spanish for the letter ‘J’, which is a reference to ‘Appendix J’, the FIA rulebook governing the preparation of road-based race cars. That’s the first clue right there to this low-volume Raging Bull’s track credentials. Lamborghini will build just 900 SVJs (priced from Dh1,731,672 plus tax), and an additional 63 ‘special editions’ with individually numbered plaques. The latter number commemorates the year Lamborghini was born — 1963.

The SVJ’s big claim to fame comes via a staggering 6min 44.97sec lap at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, making it the fastest production car — bar none — around the daunting 20.6km circuit. Also known as “The Green Hell”, the Nordschleife is acknowledged as the ultimate litmus test of a car’s overall performance envelope (not to mention the driver’s intestinal fortitude), and it’s the lap time here that’s become the widely accepted benchmark by which the supercar pecking order is structured. Forget sub-3sec 0-100kph splits and outrageous v-max claims. This is the number that really counts.