2015 Geneva Motor Show: Lamborghini unveils Aventador SV
Lamborghini’s most ferocious bull, the V-12-powered Aventador, is getting an upgrade.
The Italian automaker (owned by Volkswagen) unveiled a modified version of the mid-engined supercar Monday night ahead of Tuesday’s Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland.
Dubbed the 750-4 Superveloce (SV for short), this new iteration adds power and subtracts weight from the base Aventador, which will remain in production. The SV’s debut comes four years after Lamborghini released the original Aventador at the 2011 Geneva show.
The basics of the supercar’s recipe remains unchanged: a 6.5-liter V-12 engine, all-wheel-drive, and a single-clutch, seven-speed automated transmission are bolted to a carbon fiber passenger shell and aluminum front and rear subframes.
But Lamborghini tweaked the engine’s valve timing, intake system and exhaust, which bumped output to 740 horsepower (the car has 750 metric horsepower, hence its name) from a previous 691 horsepower. Torque remains 509 pound-feet.
This means a zero-to-62 mph run now takes 2.8 seconds and top speed is “over 217 mph,” according to Lamborghini.
The automaker also dropped about 110 pounds of weight by making various body panels (fixed rear wing, door panels, engine cover) out of carbon fiber. And the pushrod suspension now gets adaptive damping similar to the excellent system in Lamborghini’s lesser Huracan.
The SV designation is nothing new for upgraded Lamborghini models. The company’s first mid-engined supercar, the Muira, had SV variants in 1971 and 1972. So did the Aventador’s more recent forefathers, the Diablo and Murcielago.
“The new Aventador Superveloce continues the Lamborghini tradition of SV models, pushing the boundaries in terms of performance and pure driving emotion,” Stehpan Winkelmann, Lamborghini’s CEO, said ahead of the car’s debut.
The Aventador SV will land at dealerships later this spring. Pricing will be announced in the coming weeks. It won’t be cheap. The more basic Aventador we tested in 2012 cost $412,145.
The Lamborghini joins other exotic debuts at the 2015 Geneva show, including new models from Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin, Bentley and McLaren. It’s open to the media on Tuesday and Wednesday, and opens to the public from Thursday to March 15.
