Magic Bullet

Let’s dispense with the elephant in the room. The Lamborghini Urus has as much to do with the LM002—aka the Rambo Lambo, the amazing Countach-powered stud of an SUV favored by oil sheiks and sold by Lamborghini in the 1980s—as I do with Gal Gadot.

- Jonny Lieberman

Thing is, because of the legitimate off-roading heritage given to the brand by the LM002, Lamborghini has more of a right to build an SUV than any other supercar maker. However, I’ve now driven both Rambo’s Lambo and the Urus, and there’s only the most tangential of relations. Namely, the badge.

The three-ton body-on-frame LM002 was developed from the rear-engine Cheetah military vehicle built to woo the U.S. Army. (Uncle Sam eventually went with AM General’s HMMWV.) The Urus is purely civilian, based on the Volkswagen Group’s MLB Evo architecture, which underpins the Audi Q7, Bentley Bentayga, and—in short-wheelbase form—the Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg. Actually, if you dig deep enough, the current Audi A4 is also built on the MLB Evo platform. Shhh.

The LM002 featured a torqued up version of the Countach’s 5.2-liter V-12. Does the Urus sport a low-down, gruntier version of the Aventador’s 6.5-liter V-12? Nope. As you might imagine, especially given the MLB Evo roots, the newest Lamborghini uses a variant of Audi’s venerable 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, which in Urus guise is good for 650 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque.

Why no 12-cylinder, like the Urus’s platform mate, the Bentayga, which comes packing a 600-hp, 664-lb-ft twin-turbo W-12? “China,” says Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s director of research and development. That nation’s rather arbitrary tax policy goes exponential based on displacement. Anything above 4.0 liters comes with crippling luxury surcharges.