Lamborghini Urus 2019 Wagon Review

Is the Lamborghini Urus right for me?

That’ll depend on what you think of its styling. Compared to the relatively understated Audi Q7/Q8, Volkswagen Touareg and Porsche Cayenne that the Urus shares its platform genealogy with, the Lambo SUV is as brash as they come. It has Gold Coast property developer written all over it, complete with designer sleeve tatts and 24/7 suntan, yet that judgement isn’t really fair.

Underneath its Transformer-esque exterior hides a surprisingly excellent SUV – both exciting enough to fulfil buyers’ supercar-on-stilts fantasies, and versatile enough to save Lamborghini’s four-door foray from seeming like a decadent wank.

What does the 2019 Lamborghini Urus cost?

The Urus’ ground-zero price tag isn’t small – $390,000 before on-road costs – and this ‘Giallo Auge’ (yellow) test car isn’t standard, meaning there’s an extensive list of mainly cosmetic options that expand its entry price by around $75,000.

Added-extra highlights include fully electric front seats with heating/cooling and massage function ($5832) in Q-Citura diamond-pattern leather (also $5832) with optional stitching ($1237) and embroidered Lamborghini shields on the headrests ($1591 per seat). The grippy steering wheel’s perforated-leather rim is also extra ($1237), as is the contrasting yellow stitching ($707), and you’ll probably want the audio quality of Bang & Olufsen’s ‘Advanced 3D’ sound system for $11,665 extra.

All up, that’s $463,701 (before on-road costs) for our yellow and black bad boy.

What is the Lamborghini Urus 's interior like?

Given its far-from-dainty external size, it’s a relief to discover that the Urus is actually surprisingly practical. And given its far-from-affordable price tag, it’s also reassuring to experience the genuine quality and tactility inside its cabin … even if many of the slick-looking screens are from high-end Audis.

Indeed, if you look closely, there’s Audi provenance all over the place – from the centre armrests to the door grips, steering-wheel buttons and even the instrument-screen fundamentals – but there’s also enough Italian flamboyance to add plenty of flair.

The cog design of the instrument graphics, the hexagonal shapes and patterned air vents all introduce some Lambo design DNA, but it’s the space-age ‘Tamburo’ transmission and drive-mode controls that prove the Urus is far from straight-laced.

In a slightly contrived piece of theatre, you need to flip up the red centre flap to expose the starter button, then press the top button on the centre handle and pull it back to select Drive. Or you can squeeze the right-hand wheel paddle.

How much space does the Lamborghini Urus  Wagon have?

The Urus effortlessly fulfils the brief of a big, burly SUV. Not only does it have plenty of room in all directions, it’s well-packaged too, with the seating placement and available adjustment mirroring the similar level of flexibility in a Porsche Cayenne.

The Urus’ front bucket seats are excellent – particularly so in this upgraded version – and will go sports-car low if improving the centre of gravity is your thing. And the spacious back seat is downright luxurious with a great view, commendable seat support, dual-zone rear climate control with four air vents, and even generous bottle storage and proper grab handles in the doors. Plus, you get a terrific 616-litre boot and can option an (Audi-sourced) cargo-management system for $1237 that’s awesome for clamping stuff down.

What's the Lamborghini Urus 's tech like?

Pretty much as good as it gets, especially with the optional Bang & Olufsen stereo. Befitting its considerable price, you get a phone-holder compartment with wireless charging, multiple USB connections, and a DVD player, and there’s navigation, smartphone integration with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a four-channel, eight-speaker sound system. A TV tuner and digital radio are optional.

But if you cough up nearly $12K extra, the Bang & Olufsen ‘3D’ system brings a 1700-watt output and 21 premium speakers. If you’re an audiophile and music lover, it’s a must – it’s concert-hall brilliant.

How reliable is the 2019 Lamborghini Urus ?

Potentially more so than its supercar siblings due to the necessary ruggedness and strength built into its all-wheel-drive capabilities, but let’s not forget the engineering depth of its Audi-Porsche mechanical DNA.

Despite being such a powerhouse, the Urus’s 4.0-litre V8 isn’t an overly stressed engine, while its eight-speed automatic and all-wheel-drive system are designed to handle the grunt of this Lamborghini SUV.

How safe is the Lamborghini Urus ?

No crash-test authority has independently rated the Urus, however given its design genes, standard safety equipment and even its relatively sleek nose (which lessens the severity of pedestrian impact), it’s almost certain it would achieve a five-star crash-test score.

Yet there’s also the passive-safety benefit of having such an effortlessly powerful, phenomenally tractive SUV that shrugs its shoulders at bad weather and sub-standard roads. It’s this aspect, as well as the multiple sensors and cameras alerting you to its extremities, that makes the Urus family friendly, as well as furiously fast.

What is the Lamborghini Urus 's warranty like?

Lamborghini’s standard warranty is three years/unlimited kilometres, however this can be extended for an extra one or two years (for an undisclosed cost). There’s also a 10-year warranty for paint and corrosion.

What are the on-going costs for the Lamborghini Urus Wagon?

Lamborghini Australia does offer capped-price servicing packages for the Urus (for an undisclosed cost), spanning either three or five years. The recommended service interval is 12 months or 15,000km.

According to The Red Book, the projected three-year retained value of a Lamborghini Urus is 60.8 per cent. As a comparison, the resale of its mechanical cousins, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Bentley Bentayga V8, is 65.5 per cent and 60.3 per cent respectively.

Is the 2019 Lamborghini Urus  value for money?

On just about every level, the Lamborghini Urus and “value” probably shouldn’t be mentioned in the same sentence but it’s all relative. If your salary is deep into six figures (or beyond), the 400-odd grand required for a very exclusive slice of SUV sportiness probably isn’t so daunting.

A pragmatic person would point out that the Porsche Cayenne Turbo can be loaded to its roof rails with options and be on the road for low-300s, which is considerably less coin that what a Urus would command. But the Porsche doesn’t have the Lambo’s X-factor, and that virtue could well be priceless.

What's under the Lamborghini Urus 's bonnet?

When given its full head of steam from a standing start, the Urus accelerates faster than a busted lift to 100km/h – nailing the triple-digit benchmark in just 3.6 seconds. That’s down to the 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 thundering away under its beak-like bonnet, mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission and a sophisticated AWD system.

Producing 478kW and a stonking 850Nm of torque (from 2250-4500rpm), the Urus’s engine is absolutely ferocious, and sounds even angrier as you move up through the multiple settings in its ‘ANIMA’ drive mode selector (Strada, Sport and Corsa for bitumen driving). Compared to the suavely seductive burble of a Porsche Cayenne Turbo (which shares engine DNA with the Urus), the Lambo’s exhaust soundtrack is louder than the crowd at an A.C Milan home game – gratuitously barking and growling and crackling, depending on engine load. It’s glorious!

And yet it’s incredibly docile too – scaling its mountainous torque plateau effortlessly in taller gear ratios, ticking over at less than 1500rpm and behaving as soberly as its distant Porsche cousin. I spose you don’t always need to turn every head in the schoolyard as you drop the brats off in your family-friendly Urus, though I definitely would’ve appreciated seeing four black lines and hearing a thunder clap from those four rear pipes when I was a child!

How much fuel does the Lamborghini Urus Wagon use?

The official government combined fuel-consumption figure of 12.7L/100km isn’t what you’d call economical, but it’s actually quite respectable for an SUV as large, heavy and powerful as this.

What's it like to drive the Lamborghini Urus ?

With all four wheels doing the driving and arguably the most extreme wheel and tyre package of any vehicle on earth – enormous (optional) 23-inch gloss-black alloys (costing $10,428) wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tyres measuring 285/35ZR23 up front and 325/30ZR23 at the rear – it’s extremely unlikely that the Urus would ever break traction. Yet if that all sounds a bit too prim and proper for a Lamborghini, then fear not. This bright-yellow beast produces smiles as much as it attracts bees.

Riding on a leggy 3003mm wheelbase, the Urus’s adaptive air-sprung suspension includes active roll stabilisation (to reduce body roll in corners) and an active torque-vectoring rear differential (to enhance the Urus’ cornering turn-in). The AWD system usually sends 60 per cent of drive to the rear wheels, but in extreme dynamic situations it can send up to 87 per cent to the back axles or 70 percent to the front.

An additional sweetener is rear-axle steering, which sharpens the Urus’s change-of-direction ability even further, while chopping a decent wedge out of its turning circle – making this 5.1-metre-long monolith surprisingly wieldy. But it’s the combination of all these physics-defying technical smarts that makes the Urus such an entertainer on a winding road.

In Sport and Corsa drive modes, the Urus has a delightful rear-biased handling character and super-keen steering response, making 2.2 tonnes of vision-filling SUV feel almost chuckable. Plus there’s the shove-in-the-back thrill of all that traction and all that torque thrusting it out of corners. It’s hilarity of the highest order … literally!

Yet the Urus isn’t just about dynamic engagement. Its air suspension delivers a surprisingly supple ride in Strada mode – especially given its wheel size – as well as premium levels of refinement.

How does the 2019 Lamborghini Urus compare to the competition?

Until Ferrari fronts up with an SUV, the Urus technically has the ‘Super SUV’ niche pretty much to itself, yet there’s obvious competition in its Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Bentley Bentayga cousins.

They’re all roughly as fast as each other (with the W12-engined Bentayga nudging out the Urus by just one km/h to earn the ‘fastest SUV in the world’ tag at 306km/h) but they’re all quite different in flavour.

The Porsche is stunningly focused but also suavely refined; the Bentley amps up the luxury factor while disguising its prodigious power with even more refinement; while the Urus enjoys making a sing and dance about its wondrous talents.

Drive's Verdict

Much like complaining about smartphones, social media and traffic, the once-maligned SUV has become part of the furniture, so deal with it. And the same applies to the fact that sports-car manufacturers are now building them.

The Lamborghini Urus is about as far from a shrinking violet as you can possibly get, yet there’s real finesse in the way this Italian SUV drives, sounds and feels. Smooth and supple when you want it to be, yet loud and lascivious when the time is right, it’s so much more than just a gauche showpony express. We like it. Immensely.

2019 Lamborghini Urus price and specifications

Price: $390,000 before on-road costs (or options)

Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo-petrol V8

Power: 478kW at 6000rpm

Torque: 850Nm at 2250-4500rpm

Transmission: 8-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

Fuel use: 12.7L/100km