Lamborghini boffin says SUV can work

Urus wil share VW PL73 large SUV platform with the next-generation the next-generation Audi Q7, Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg.

Urus wil share VW PL73 large SUV platform with the next-generation the next-generation Audi Q7, Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg.

Published May 16, 2012

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Lamborghini research and development director Maurizio Reggiani has high hopes of getting the production green light for the Urus SUV concept, first shown at Auto China in Beijing in April, before the end of 2012 - but it will be at least four years before it reaches your local Lambo shop.

He told Automotive News Europe that Audi top management had set him the target of making the production version the lightest and best-performing car in its class.

“That,” he said, “is forcing us to think outside the box.”

The only thing that's set in stone is that the Urus will be built on VW's new PL73 large SUV platform, which it will share with the next-generation Audi Q7, Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg - and even the monumentally ugly Bentley EXP 9 F, if that ever gets the green light, although we're not holding our breath.

But Reggiani's target weight is two tonnes, which would make it about 200kg lighter than the current Q7/Touareg/Cayenne family. And that's a big ask, because the PL73 monocoque is made of steel.

That means the bolt-on bits will have to be pretty exotic: carbon-fibre seat shells, and aluminium (possibly even an aircraft-spec aluminium/magnesium alloy) for the bonnet, doors and tailgate.

CLEVER WEIGHT-SAVING IDEA

Lamborghini (and Reggiani) have considerable experience in carbon-fibre fabrication, and he has already come up with one clever weight-saving idea - a one-piece, forged-carbon interior brace that will stretch from the firewall to behind the rear seats (replacing the centre console and tunnel) and then branch out to either side to lock into the rear suspension mounts.

According to Reggiani that'll give the shell outstanding rigidity while adding minimal extra weight.

He also doesn't want to use the proven Lamborghini V10 engine - the new 4.2-litre Audi RS V8 is shorter, he says, which would allow it to be mounted behind the front axle instead of over it - crucial for a tall vehicle such as an SUV.

The big V8 currently produces about 330kW in Audi's RS models, but Reggiani is confident that with some Sant' Agata tweaking and a couple of turbos to force-feed it, it will reliably deliver the 440kW power target set by Lamborghini boss Stephan Winkelmann.

HUGE TORQUE

In addition, he says, it will make the huge torque at low revs that an SUV needs, which would not easily be forthcoming from the high-revving V10. The rest of the drivetrain, according to Reggiani, would be developed from existing components - a dual-clutch transmission and Lamborghini's proven permanent all-wheel-drive system

Winkelmann wants to sell 3000 of these high-velocity beetle-crushers a year, about half of them in North and South America, and the rest fairly evenly split between Europe and Russia, and China and the Middle East.

That's way more than the Lamborghini plant at Sant' Agata Bolognese can handle (total production in 2011 of all models combined was just 1600) but Reggiani says final assembly and 'personalising' will still be done there.

Nobody at Lamborghini is willing to discuss prices yet but, even if 80 percent of the Urus is built by Volkswagen, it will still be expensive - and rightly so.

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