Lamborghini Built the Wrong Urus

Contrary to its public image, Porsche is not actually a sports car company. Its most famous product remains the 911, and it also sells the 911’s junior siblings, the Cayman and Boxster. But 59 percent of its sales are Macan and Cayenne SUVs. The sports cars only exist because of the SUVs.Lamborghini Temerario. Courtesy LamborghiniLamborghini, by sales volume, is also an SUV company. Its three-model lineup consists of the $605,000 Revuelto, the $358,000 Temerario junior supercar, and its SUV, the Urus, which outsells them both combined by a factor of nearly three. In the first nine months of 2025, the last stretch for which Lamborghini broke out its models, it sold 2,145 sports cars and 5,995 Uruses.The strange thing is that, though the “base” Urus has been a great sales success — offering Lamborghini flair for the affluent SUV shopper — its higher-trim and higher-profit variants have been disappointing and misguided. Take its latest version, the Urus SE Performante.Lamborghini Urus Performante SE. Courtesy of LamborghiniArriving at dealers early next year with an expected sticker price of about $300,000, the SE Performante is the most powerful Urus ever, putting out 801 horsepower and 737 pound-feet of torque from a hybridized 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. That’s 144 horsepower more than the last top-of-the-line Urus, the non-hybrid Performante. The hybrid parts that enable that also add 712 pounds to the curb weight, but every Urus is a tank anyway, and this 5,452-pound one will hit 60 mph from nothing in 3.3 seconds and top out at 194 mph.Lamborghini Urus Performante SE. Courtesy of LamborghiniIt’s all impressive, and potential customers will like the performance and power — but Lamborghini shouldn’t be making a “Urus Performante” anyway.Lamborghini Urus Performante SE. Courtesy of LamborghiniOn the Gallardo and Huracán sports cars, the label referred to a lightweight, wider-track, higher-downforce, track-focused package. Most of them spent their lives rumbling through Knightsbridge, West London, but they were weapons on a track.Lamborghini Urus Performante SE. Courtesy of LamborghiniThe Urus stays true to that in some surface ways. Compared with the SE, it has a wider track, 23 percent more downforce — courtesy of a huge diffuser and grown spoiler — stiffened suspension, and 71 pounds of weight savings. But it’s still a near-three-ton SUV. There’s a reason we use horses for dressage and not hippos.Instead, Lamborghini should have leaned into the off-roader aspect of the Urus. In 2022 Lamborghini made a jacked-up, off-road version of the Huracán called the Sterrato, which was by far the coolest car it has released since the Gallardo Balboni in 2009 — and a lifted, chunky-tired, arch-swollen go-anywhere Urus Sterrato would not only have been far cooler than this, but would have met customers where they are.Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato. Courtesy of LamborghiniFew would ever actually take it off-road, but that doesn’t matter; it would be the perfect alternative for those from Dubai to Los Angeles who would otherwise have bought a high-end G-Wagon. It’s crazy that Land Rover has done this with the OCTA line — a high-power, off-road-centric take on the Defender — and Lamborghini hasn’t.Lamborghini even has the heritage to support it. In 1977, Lamborghini took on a military contract to build a Jeep alternative for the American army, and when the army ultimately passed on it, Lamborghini recouped some of the research funds by building the LM002: a huge, bulky off-roader with the Countach’s V12 under its expansive hood. It was slow, unreliable, and expensive, and so was not a sales success — but it was extremely cool. The Urus could use a bit more of its soul.

Lamborghini Built the Wrong Urus

Lamborghini Built the Wrong Urus

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