DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!

Twelve years on, the Aventador's successor is here. Prepare for a hard reset

-  JASON BARLOW

On reflection, it may have been an error. Lamborghini is widely credited with inventing the supercar, in the beguiling form of 1966's Miura. An hour after completing a deep dive of its all-new 2023 ancestor, the Revuelto, I'm somewhere on the plains of Emilia-Romagna, behind the wheel of a Miura SV, V12 singing, throttle blipping, living the dream despite the omnipresent threat of wayward locals hellbent on nerfing me into a ditch. The Miura has a rep for being a gnarly drive, but this one is an absolute peach: delicate, responsive, and as deliriously analogue as cars get.

The Revuelto is the latest in a bloodline that swirls all the way back to this masterpiece. Lamborghini will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year, so there will be hoopla aplenty and some retrospection. But the Revuelto is a gigantic leap forwards, a reminder that while this is a company whose cars are always deeply charismatic, there's a proven commitment to high technology here.

The Revuelto is, inevitably, a plug-in hybrid, but it's one that takes the possibilities of the format and does wild and wonderful things with it. In fact, Lamborghini insists on the abbreviation HPEV to describe the new car, for "high-performance electrified vehicle". While there are efficiencies here and a modest amount of pure electric running is available, this is more about exploring the dynamic bandwidth of electrification. Performance is up by 30 per cent, emissions reduced by the same amount.