2019 Lamborghini Urus - The world’s first Super Sport Utility Vehicle https://goo.gl/o8ZgQL Astonishment has always been what a Lamborghini does best. Lambos drop jaws, dilate pupils, inspire goosebumps, and knock frontal lobes back into the parietal lobes. They are impractical, intemperate, impossible to see out of, and get stupid hot inside, but, damn, look at and listen to them. Now here is the new 2019 Urus, the first Lamborghini that does none of those things. Purely as a business proposition, the Urus was unavoidable. The market is obsessed with SUVs, and ignoring that and the profits that go with it is a formula for permanent market marginalization. Lamborghini needs a crossover to anchor its cash flow, stabilize sales, and recruit new customers who may want an Aventador or a Huracán but who need a vehicle that functions as a daily driver. If Lamborghini sells the 3500-plus Uruses it intends to annually, that effectively doubles the company’s sales. Will success ruin Lamborghini? It’s V-8 Time Again The Urus is the first V-8–powered Lambo since the Jalpa left production in 1988. But while the Jalpa’s 255-hp 3.5-liter V-8 was an independent Lamborghini design, the Urus is a product of the Volkswagen Group and leverages the assets of the massive corporation. So the Urus’s engine is a 641-hp version of the twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 used in high-end Audis, some Bentleys, and the Porsche Panamera. Lamborghini vaguely claims that demon tweaks including specific cylinder heads have been applied, but the V-8 is assembled at a Volkswagen plant in Hungary and shipped to Lamborghini as a complete unit. It’s not as charismatic as the Huracán’s V-10 or as intimidating as the Aventador’s V-12, but the hungry Hungarian V-8 under the Urus’s hood defines the vehicle’s character. Lamborghini has fitted it with an exhaust system that burbles with menace even at idle and snarls ferociously under load as it approaches its 6750-rpm redline. The twin-scroll turbos between the cylinder banks endow it with low-end thump unlike any previous Lamborghini’s engine (they’ve all been naturally aspirated until now). There’s 627 lb-ft of torque between 2250 and 4500 rpm—and plenty below and above those points—so the eight-cylinder endows the Urus with a responsive muscularity that’s as mesmerizing as a Lamborghini engine should be. Even though it grunts unlike any previous Lambo engine.