Lamborghini Urus Review 2024

There are luxury SUVs, and there are luxury SUVs. In terms of price and status, the Lamborghini Urus finds itself a cut above the likes of Audi, BMW and Range Rover, competing more with the likes of the Bentley Bentayga and Rolls-Royce Cullinan. We’ve driven all three of these cars back to back to compare them directly, and there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear above everything else: if you want the sportiest one of the lot, then it has to be the Lambo.

All versions of the Lamborghini Urus have the same twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox, feeding power to all four wheels. Sure, the later S and Performante models, offered from 2022 onwards, had a smidge more power, but with 641bhp, the original Urus was hardly lacking in that regard, and the uptick in performance - on paper at least - was marginal.

With that in mind, engine and trim spec is largely irrelevant. What’s far more pertinent with a car like the Urus is the nature of the optional extras fitted to any given example you find. The original £160,000 car was a blank canvas to which original owners would add many thousands of pounds worth of optional extras, making the price even more astronomical. So, it’s more about finding a car with the sort of extras and features you want. And don’t go looking for a bargain, because they don’t exist.

The Lamborghini Urus is a luxurious sports SUV, and in that regard, it could be considered a rival for things like the Audi Q8, Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg - all of which it shares its mechanicals with - along with cars like the BMW X6, Range Rover Sport and Mercedes-AMG GLE.

However, the big Lambo sits quite a bit higher than these cars when it comes to price, landing it in the spectrum of uber-SUVs such as the Bentley Bentayga (which again is heavily related mechanically), the Aston Martin DBX and the Rolls-Royce Cullinan.

If you’re buying a car from a brand as evocative and as exotic as Lamborghini - and paying this much for it - you’d expect it to feel like a real cut above the norm in terms of quality. Thankfully, you can really see Lambo’s Audi connection here, because the Urus’ interior has much of the look and feel of a high-end offering from its German sister brand. The main structural parts feel solid, substantial and expensive, and there are plenty of flourishes to keep things interesting, with piano black wood and brushed aluminium inserts in the dashboard, an alcantara headliner and leather coverings for the seats, steering wheel and door trims. You might find the odd switch or button shared with an Audi A4 saloon, but it’s not enough to ruin the feeling of grandeur.

If you’re a fan of smartphone-style touchscreen systems, then you’ll absolutely love the Urus: glance at the centre console, and you’ll notice two of the things. The 8.6-inch one on top takes care of all the regular infotainment functions, while the 10.1-inch below it usually serves as an alternative to conventional air-con controls. OK, we’ll concede that it all looks quite swish, but our view is that, if you’re going to have air-con controls that are separate from the rest of the infotainment system, why not have regular dials and buttons, which require less attention - and are therefore less distracting - than touchscreens on the move.

The top screen uses software and menu layouts that you might recognise from their use in some Audis, so the system is fairly responsive to inputs and it’s reasonably easy to find your way around the various functions. However, the top screen does look a bit small by more modern standards. All of the screens - including the 12.3-inch one behind the steering wheel that displays your driving information - also use graphics and fonts that you’ll recognise from Audi products, so they look clear, legible and slick.

You get all the infotainment functionality you expect, and maybe some you don’t. Satellite navigation with 3D maps, voice control, DAB radio, USB ports, a Bluetooth phone connection and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are provided, and so are wireless phone charging and a DVD player.

You’d expect a car as massive as the Urus to be practical, and it does a reasonably good job here. Let’s put it this way: it’s the most practical Lamborghini you’re likely to come across.

Space in the front seats is generous, and the wide cabin means that there’s plenty of distance between you and your front passenger, so you don’t feel squashed in. In the back of the car, you get either a conventional three-seat bench or two individual seats, and these can be reclined in both formats. Which you'll want will be up to you. You probably won’t want to use the middle-rear seat in the five-seater version too often because it’s a bit hard and the bulky transmission tunnel in the floor in front of it eats into the foot space available, but it is useful to have on those occasions where you need to cram in an extra body on a trip to the Polo club. Whichever seating layout you choose, legroom is very generous in the back of the Urus, but the car’s sloping roofline means that headroom is rather more limited, and anyone much over six-feet tall will find their scalp pressing into the alcantara headlining.

The boot measures 616 litres in the five-seater version, or 574 litres when four seats are fitted. It’s a useful square shape, and a powered tailgate is fitted as standard, although there is a bit of a load lip to lift heavy items over. The rear bench folds down in a useful 40-20-40 split, giving you more versatility than the more common 60-40 layout.

All versions of the Urus get a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The power is sent to all four wheels, with the larger portion of it directed towards the rears. And that power is certainly not in short supply. In the original Urus, which is the one we’ve driven, the output stands at 641bhp, while max torque sits at 627lb ft. Despite the Urus weighing well over two tonnes, that’s enough shove to propel this enormous car from 0-62mph in just 3.6 seconds, and onto a top speed of 190mph.

It feels every bit as fast as the numbers suggest, too, with off-the-line launches properly pinning you back in your seat, and hugely strong on-the-move acceleration only ever a gentle prod of your right foot away. Stick with Strada mode, and the gearshifts are brisk but smooth, and the transmission always seems to select the right cog at the first time of asking. Select the Sport or Corsa modes, the transmission punches up and down the ratios with progressive amounts of aggression, while the exhaust spits and crackles for even more drama. You can wrestle back control of the gearchanges by using the steering-mounted paddles, and the transmission always responds quickly to your orders, while the standard carbon-ceramic brakes provide huge stopping power and a decent amount of feel. Make no mistake, this is a hugely fast car, with a level of pace that will make you never for a second doubt whether it deserves to wear a Lamborghini badge.

When the S and the Performante versions came along in 2022, these were given slightly more power, with the wick being turned up to 657bhp. The S version trims the 0-62mph dash time to 3.5 seconds, while the lighter Performante trims it to just 3.3 seconds. We’ve not tried these versions, but given the effortless ferocity of the standard car, you can be pretty confident that they won’t hang about.

As we’ve already said, the V8 engine sounds appropriately naughty in Sport and Corsa modes, which is central to the experience when you’re getting a move-on. When you’re not, and you’re just wanting to get home after a long day, selecting Strada makes things quieter. It’s not Rolls-Royce levels of tranquility, and the engine is always audible in the background, but it’s quiet enough to make life effortlessly civilised. You won’t hear a vast amount in the way of wind noise, either, but the car’s fat tyres do inevitably kick up a bit of road noise.

The Urus comes with most of the safety kit you expect. You have driver aids such as autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning and lane-keep assist to help you avoid having an accident in the first place, and six airbags and E-Call emergency assistance just in case the worst happens. However, you might expect more given the money you’re spending. For instance, the cruise control is merely a passive system, not the semi-autonomous adaptive system you might be expecting.

Euro NCAP doesn’t tend to crash test cars like the Urus. They don’t sell in high enough numbers to warrant it, and smashing them to smithereens is a prohibitively expensive business. So, with no test results to go on, it’s not clear how well the car would fare in a crash.

Although the Urus is the biggest-selling Lamborghini there is, the firm still sells cars in relatively modest numbers, modest enough that it doesn’t feature in the various reliability and customer satisfaction surveys doing the rounds, and that includes the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index.

Of course, Lamborghini’s cars - along with the offerings of pretty much every Italian supercar manufacturer - have traditionally had a reputation for being highly strung and prone to catastrophic faults on a regular basis, but the firm’s connection with Audi over the last few years has seen this reputation dwindle, although do be aware that if repairs to your car are needed, they’ll likely be astronomically expensive.

All cars are bestowed with their own insurance rating on a scale of 1 to 50. Cars in group 1 are the cheapest to insure, while those in group 50 are the most expensive. Now, it probably won’t stagger you to learn that a car like the Lamborghini Urus - with its six-figure price tag and upwards of 600 horsepower - sits at the very upper end of that scale in group 50. However, it’s also true that if you have the financial means to buy an Urus, then you can probably afford to insure it, too.

Again, if you’re wealthy enough to seriously consider buying and running a Lamborghini Urus, then the price of a now-metaphorical tax disc probably isn’t going to keep you awake at night. For the record, you pay the same flat rate of annual tax as you do on every petrol-powered car, which standards at £180, and because the Urus costs more than £40,000 when new (quite a bit more, as it happens…), you’re also required to pay an additional surcharge of £390 per year between years two and six of the car’s life. That takes your annual VED tax outlay for that period to £570.

We’ve already talked about the level of standard kit you get with the Urus when it comes to safety and the all-important area of infotainment, and the news on both scores is largely good. As it jolly well should be when you’re spending so much cash. 

The car also comes with a decent amount of luxury items, too, again, as it should. These include heated front seats with 12-way powered adjustment, keyless entry and go, cruise control, all-round LED lighting with high-beam assist headlights, front and rear parking sensors, a powered tailgate, leather upholstery and an alcantara headliner.