Lamborghini Aventador SVJ 2018 review

Would it surprise you to learn that the SVJ was extremely fast? Thought not. J is for article J in the old FIA documents that told car makers what they had to do to go sports car racing, and although the Aventador doesn’t race, there are slower cars that do.

Less focused-feeling ones too. The SVJ is fast in the old-fashioned, brutal way, in a straight line, at least. What might be the world’s greatest production engine is exceptionally urgent, and feels no slower to me than the crop of hypercars I’ve driven. Which, probably, is because it isn’t.

It’s mated to a single-clutch gearbox which is as terrible most of the time as you’ll expect, fudging through changes with an inordinate amount of head rock. But put the car into ‘Corsa’ mode, which also puts the dynamic steering into a constant rather than variable ratio – so is something you should absolutely do – and it just punches through shifts with a fairly satisfying venom.

Braking is excellent, in terms of strength. You’re aware of the car’s shimmies, though that might be down to the fact that you can feel them well, rather than that they’re more severe than in other cars. Plus there’s the fact that, at the end of Estoril’s main straight, you’re likely doing more than 170mph. From lower speeds, the SVJ pulls up brilliantly.

What it does from there, though, and into corner entry, can feel odd. It’s natural in a big car to ease off the brakes gently as you begin to turn – it keeps the car’s nose planted and reduces understeer. The rear-steer in the SVJ means you don’t need to do that. In fact, it almost guarantees that you’ll be winding off quite a lot of the lock that you’ve just applied. At nearly five metres long, the Aventador is a big car and Lamborghini figures you’ll want all the help you can get to make it feel agile. Job done, then, to that extent: it pays to brake only in a straight line, then turn delicately and let the rear-steer do the work. 

That does mean there’s a slight dead spot on the way into a corner, a steady-throttle state before you line up the exit. Although given you’ll be going quite fast, it won’t last that long. And corner exit is, in ‘Corsa’ mode, pretty neutral, but leave the car in ‘Sport’ and it’s slower, and more rear-biased. 

Small caveat about these impressions, by the way: Estoril was resurfaced about a fortnight before this was written and therefore about 25% more slippery than usual. Lamborghini says the handling balance would be largely unchanged, unless you tried to give it a ‘bung’ at low speeds, which would induce understeer here. Our test car ran Corsa tyres too – because Lamborghini didn’t know the low-grip, low-degredation surface was going to be laid when it performed its recce, and brought 240 sets of Corsas for the launch, expecting to get through a day per car. As it is, they still looked new after 20 laps.