Lamborghini Aventador

Apologies for being late again. Had exams to write. Right, as I promised before, I'm going to write about the Aventador today, so let's get into it. The Lamborghini Aventador was launched on 28th February 2011(yes, I remember the date) at the Geneva Motor Show. I just felt a huge wave of sadness as I typed the words 'Geneva Motor Show'. The 2020 edition of the biggest motor show on the planet has been cancelled due to the coronavirus reaching Switzerland. I'll never forgive the Chinese for this. Anyways, back to the Aventador. The Aventador replaced the decade-old Murcielago and in true Lamborghini fashion, was named after a Spanish fighting bull. I remember my jaw dropping to floor as the covers were pulled off the car in 2011. Never before had I been smitten with a car within 5 seconds of seeing it, that too a white car! The design was authentic V12 Lamborghini - full of flair and flamboyance. But the Aventador looked like a car that was partly designed by extra-terrestrials. Where the Murcielago was an understated take on a V12 Lamborghini, the Aventador looked as if the designers consumed 2 bottles of scotch before sitting down and designing it. The edgy and futuristic lines and creases of the Aventador ensure that no one mistakes it for any other supercar. The Aventador's mechanicals were equally impressive too. Powering it was a 6.5 litre naturally-aspirated V12 that delivered a power output of 691 hp and 690 Nm of torque. Sounds like any V12 Lambo that came before it, right? Well, it isn't. The Aventador's engine was brand new, eschewing the 50 year-old Bizzarini V12 that powered every V12 Lambo before the Aventador. It was truly sad to see it go, but the Aventador's engine made up for it. It sounded spirited and focussed, compared to the animalistic howl of the previous engine. In fact, the Aventador was the first Lamborghini for which handling was the top priority during development, which is why it was one of the few road cars to receive F1-style pushrod suspension. Even with most of the focus on handling, the Aventador was still a RAPID car. It sprinted from rest to 100 kph in an astounding-for-its-time 2.9 seconds(owing to AWD), and kept the music going till 370 kph, despite weighing the better part of 1 and a half tons. It was quite simply the fastest road car Lamborghini had ever produced. Moreover, even though it was loaded with Audi technology, Lamborghini still found ways to make it soulful. It had many flaws, the biggest perhaps being its transmission. It used a 7-speed single-clutch automated manual transmission, the same type of transmission you get in a Suzuki Celerio AMT, just 100 times better. This gearbox was so clunky and slow at low revs that the Aventador was basically deemed undriveable at city speeds. However, as the revs grew, so did the speed of the gearbox. At 7500 rpm, the gearbox was said to shift faster than any dual-clutch automatic in the market, with shift times dropping to almost 50 milliseconds. Additionally, as if the power from the engine wasn't savage enough, the shifts from the gearbox were so brutal that they would cause the driver's head to hit the headrest of the seat from the sheer whiplash. Often times around a track, owners would have to stop driving it just so their neck wouldn't snap in two. I joke, of course, but people have suffered neck injuries from driving the Aventador fast. And surprisingly, no one raised any fingers towards Lamborghini for potentially putting the lives of their customers in jeopardy, because this is exactly what big V12 Lambos are supposed to do. They're supposed to make the driver soil their pants out of sheer fear and thrill. This is what made them feel like actual raging bulls - threatening to throw the rider off - and this is why I prefer Lamborghini to every other supercar brand out there. You can make a car go 500 mph, but what's the point of all that speed if you can't reach it anywhere on the planet? Lamborghini realize this, and focus on the aspects that make a car fun. Okay, I've veered a little off-topic there. Back to the Aventador then. Quite simply, the Aventador was the best car Lamborghini had ever made, and it showed. Production for the Aventador was capped at 4000 units, just like the Murcielago. However, 5 years from its launch, the Aventador hit the 5000 unit production milestone, and it's still selling in 2020! The fact that the Aventador sold more than the Murcielago ever did in half the time is testament to it being one of, if not the greatest and most popular supercar of the 2010s. Like every V12 Lambo before it, Lamborghini introduced a faster and lightened version of the Aventador in 2015- dubbed the 750-4 SuperVeloce(pictured). The power output was uprated to 741 hp and the car shed 50 kg thanks to increased carbonfibre usage in the chassis. This brought the power-to-weight ratio to an impressive 370 hp per ton. The 0-100 kph time dropped to 2.8 seconds and the top speed was said to be in excess of 350 kph. The aerodynamics however, received the biggest boost. A CFRP wing at the back, combined with a revised front splitter and a new rear diffuser, increased the downforce by a whopping 180% over the standard Aventador. This made the SV much more capable round a track. Moreover, even with all the brutal weight-saving Lamborghini did with the SV, they still managed to maintain it's beauty. In fact, according to me, the SV is the most beautiful version of the Aventador, even though bigger and better versions came after it. Speaking of bigger and better versions, while the SV takes the award for looks, the Aventador SVJ takes the cake for the greatest Lamborghini ever. The SVJ(SuperVeloce Jota) was an even more focussed, even more powerful, and even more light edition of the SV. In fact, it was so focussed that it shattered the Nurburgring record for the fastest road-legal production car in July of 2018. Clocking a time of 6:44.97 round the Nordschleife, the Aventador SVJ was faster than the previous recordholder, the Porsche 911 GT2 RS by 3 seconds and faster than the Porsche 918 by a whole 13 seconds! This record is still untouched as of today and seals the Aventador(in my eyes) as the greatest supercar of the 2010s. The Murcielago was the defining supercar of the 2000s, and the Aventador has caused an even greater impact in the 2010s. This is the car that put Lamborghini on the map as a serious supercar maker, and the day the Aventador goes out of production(which is not that far) will be a sad one, and I will definitely be bawling my eyes out.