Lamborghini Reventon

Lamborghini Reventon

Check the ejector seat before you climb inside

Despite the fact that he died 20 years before Lamborghini was even founded, without Felix Guzman the car you are looking at would certainly not have been called Reventón. At the time of his untimely demise in 1943, Senor Guzman was a renowned bullfighter. Unfortunately he went into the ring one day feeling a little under par. The result was that he met his grisly end on the horns and under the hooves of a bull that failed to read the script. In bullfighting circles, the beast became a legend. Its name was Reventón.

I had to try quite hard not to think of that Reventón as I kept my exclusive appointment with this one. It is the most extreme, exotic and rare road car ever made by Lamborghini and, as a company with one of the greatest reputations in the world for making extreme, exotic and rare cars, that is indeed saying something. Just 21 will be built – the prototype I am to drive and 20 production cars, all of which have been offered to favoured Lamborghini collectors for a cool €1m before local taxes. At current rates, that works out at around £840,000 a pop. All, of course, were sold even before any of the owners’ probably rather well-padded backsides slid past the up-flipped scissor doors and down into the slim alcantara-lined seats.

It is a car unlike any other: rare enough to make the Bugatti Veyron look common, dramatic enough to make anything this side of a frontline fighter plane look bland. And that is no coincidence. When the good folk at Lamborghini decided they were going to build their most ambitious road car in the company’s 44-year history it was to Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor fighter that their attentions turned. They wanted a car that looked like no other ever conceived, one to capture the imagination and remove the breath of those it encounters, like the Lamborghini Miura did when it single-handedly invented the entire supercar genre back in 1966. And they have succeeded.

Like many of you, I have seen pictures of the Reventón before, most from its worldwide debut at the Frankfurt motor show in September, and I thought it looked interesting and attractive. I was wrong. In the flesh it is the most captivating road car I have seen in years, maybe ever. Forget the Alfa 8C, the Ferrari 599 GTB or the aforementioned Veyron. For sheer infarct-inducing presence it is unmatched by any other road car made today. People will look in their mirrors, see one of these approaching and crash their cars trying to get out of its way. Like the Raptor, it looks as if it was designed for full stealth capability. It’s all odd angles and short lines that continue for no great distance before flicking off at some new, crazy tangent. With its matt-finish paint and carbon fibre body it looks like it should have the radar signature of a paper clip.

Disappointingly, however, I am assured this would not give me immunity from the unwelcome attention of the local constabulary, and that as this is the only functioning Reventón on the planet I am to take good care of it. By contrast I’m only concerned it takes good care of me. And this is why.

It is so easy to be carried away by the unrivalled menace of the Reventón’s shape you can forget that deep within lurks a beast every bit as savage and potentially prejudicial to your welfare as its bovine namesake. It is Lamborghini’s most powerful engine ever, a 6.5 litre 650bhp V12 orgy of Italian engineering. This is not an engine derived from one found in an Audi saloon, like the V10 motor in the Gallardo.

Audi may now run Lamborghini and I am sure it had plenty to say about how the Reventón’s powerhouse should be tuned, but this is a pure Lamborghini motor whose origins can be traced back long before any Audi involvement to a time when the company was run by none other than Ferruccio Lamborghini himself. And it is a masterpiece.

To start it, you simply twist the key – no silly button pressing here. And as it fires, something remarkable happens: the hitherto entirely black and blank dashboard turns into what looks for all the world like the instrument panel of the fighter that inspired it. Diodes blink and glimmer, and as you blip the throttle two cantilevered electronic bars rise and fall like the rapidly beating wings of a pterodactyl. It takes a few seconds to work out this is in fact the rev counter, or to be strictly accurate two rev counters. Why two? Because they look cool.

Dead ahead is another readout in the shape of a grid with a little dot at its centre. When you accelerate, it rises; as you press the massive carbon ceramic brakes, so it falls. Aim the car into a corner and it heads off to one side in sympathy. Turns out this is a G-force metre that measures both longitudinal and lateral acceleration. I wouldn’t have been that surprised to discover I was also strapped into an ejector seat. If you are not already thoroughly scared by this stage in the process of acclimatisation with the Reventón there’s a career in the RAF waiting for you.

This car is fabulous to drive: for all its state of the art technology it feels like an old-school supercar of a type Ferrari stopped making when the last of the Testarossas died more than 10 years ago. Its width is as intimidating as its punch – and this is a car that will sling you to 62mph in 3.4sec and reach 211mph. It feels heavy in slow corners, ferocious on even short straights and – on those rare occasions you find enough space to let it do some proper work – addictively wonderful. It is a difficult car to drive well, which only means that when you master it the rewards are all the richer.

Of course you can’t see out of it properly in town, making every junction a heart-in-mouth challenge. It’s impossible to park and the nose is so low that you could easily land yourself with a bill big enough to buy a normal new car just by misjudging a speed bump. But the 20 owners who will have taken delivery of their Reventóns by this time next year will not be concerned by this. They’ll fawn over the fuel filler cap – a solid lump of milled aluminium – and dribble over the single exhaust pipe, big enough to pass the emissions of a small power station. As it is, it pumps out almost half a kilogram of CO2 for every kilometre you travel. Put another way, drive your Reventón to the south of France and back and the atmosphere will be a tonne of CO2 heavier for your efforts. Perhaps it’s best not to think about that too hard. Besides, Reventóns will be so scarce and so treasured you’re unlikely to see one even in the traditional playgrounds of the fabulously rich.

Ten of them are going straight to America where most will be spirited away into private collections, rarely if ever to be seen again, which leaves just 10 more for the rest of the planet. In years to come there’ll be more sightings of Lord Lucan than Reventóns. But the Reventón is not quite as exclusive as it might first appear.

By now you would be forgiven for thinking that, given its price and appearance, this car is a bespoke piece of engineering from end to end. But it’s not. In all important mechanical respects it’s a Murciélago LP640. Chassis, engine, transmission, suspension, brakes – the lot – are carried over straight from Lamborghini’s long serving and ever excellent flagship. The only difference is Reventón engines offer (a rather paltry) 10 extra horsepower. Beyond that, all that’s changed are the bits you can see. And for those Lamborghini is asking over £600,000 more than the £197,460 purchase price of the Murciélago.

Personally I take my hat off to Lamborghini. It has identified 20 customers around the world who will willingly part with the thick end of a million quid for a rebodied version of a car costing a quarter of the price. To those that buy them, the sums involved will be an irrelevance – to Lamborghini they will likely prove useful. Me? I’ve adored the Murciélago since the day I first drove one and while I covet the Reventón even more my love is not so blind it can ignore the fact that I could have a Murciélago (which is just as fast and good to drive), a house, speedboat and helicopter for the price of a Reventón.

To me the price makes no sense at all. Buy a Bugatti Veyron for not a lot more money and you buy a car that is unique in every respect. On the other hand Reventón buyers will have so much money that a million euros, dollars or pounds are such inconsequential sums they could easily have both. And probably have. I don’t doubt that, to them, their exquisite-looking and impossibly rare Reventón will mean more than the money. I know my place and would stick with a modest little Murciélago. And the change, of course.

Vital statistics

Model Lamborghini Reventón
On sale All sold
Engine type 6496cc, 12 cylinders
Power/Torque 650bhp @ 8000rpm / 487 lb ft @ 6000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel/CO2 13.7mpg / 495g/km
Performance 0-62mph: 3.4sec / Top speed: 211mph
Price £840,000 approx
Verdict The only thing more crazy than the car is the price
Rating

The opposition

Model
Bugatti Veyron
£923,000
For The ultimate supercar of this, or any other era
Against Huge weight blunts the driving experience

Model
Lamborghini Murciélago coupé
£197,460
For Great looks, performance, handling, sound
Against Poor outward visibility, poor ride, cheap cabin