There are some car companies, usually Italian ones, that won't be rushed.
That like to take their time, have some lunch.
And nobody is better at this than Lamborghini,
as Richard Hammond shall now explain.
When it comes to their big V12 cars, their flagship battle cruisers,
Lamborghini really, really like to take their time.
Just these four, the Miura,
the Countash, the Diablo and the Murcielago,
span half a century.
And now, at last, there's a new one.
It's called the Aventador.
It costs £248,000.
And it's the closest thing to a stealth fighter jet
that you'll ever see on the road.
It even has a starter button that's straight out of Top Gun.
The current boss of Lamborghini said recently that in the old days,
the order of priority for Lamborghini was top speed, acceleration
and handling, in that order.
The thing is, for this new car, he says that order is the other way round.
Handling comes first, with top speed being given a lower priority.
So, let's find out just how low a priority that is, shall we?
Nought to 60, 2.9 seconds.
So, they still care about acceleration, then!
220 kilometres an hour...
250... 260...
270... 280 kilometres.
290 kilometres an hour.
Oh, my God!
Okay and relax.
If that's them giving top speed a low priority, bring it on!
Flat out, the Aventador will do 217 miles an hour,
which makes it faster than the old Murcielago.
How Italian is that?
No top speed, okay, 270, no more, no more than that!
This pulverising performance comes courtesy
of the Aventador's massive 6.5 litre engine...
their first all-new V12 for almost 50 years.
But what's surprising is that they bothered to make one at all.
You see, these days, a lot of carmakers are shying away from bigger engines.
BMW's new M5, for example, will have a V8 instead of a V10.
AMG are ditching V12s in favour of V8s.
It's called moving with the times.
But that's not so easy with a big Lamborghini.
A V12 is kind of its signature dish. It defines the car.
And the engineers insisted that whatever happened with the Aventador,
it had to have a V12.
And, of course, the by-product of a V12 is lots of horsepowers.
This has got 691 of them, which in Top Gear maths is 700.
That power is fed to all four wheels
through a unique design of flappy paddle gearbox.
It can change in less than 50 milliseconds,
which I can't demonstrate that even if I blink an eye.
There are other high-tech features too.
We're in strada mode right now, which is for the road.
Let's put it in corsa, track mode.
Whoa, hang on!
All right, fella, all right!
That's absolutely brutal! It kicks you in the back of the head.
And now we're in corsa mode,
let's find out how they've got on with their new number-one priority,
handling.
Traditionally, always the scariest part of testing a big Lambo.
Okay, here we go, I'm nervous.
I'm okay.
Still on the track.
I'm in a V12 Lambo, I just threw it at a corner at insane speed
and it went round.
So why am I not buried in row 85 of that 747?
This is partly because the grip is just unbelievable.
Also it's got push-rod suspension, which is very clever,
and unheard of in an road car. That's F1 stuff.
So, even when it's coming under some pressure, like that...
the steering is just... It's just... I'm turning a dial.
So, whilst the Aventador looks as Miami Vice mental
as everything else in its family tree, it's now a serious player.
The noise it makes is spirited rather than deafening.
The chassis is made from carbon fibre, not pig iron.
The air-conditioning works.
It's a proper car, rather than a machine that wants, most of all, to kill you.
And that makes me a bit sad.
Basically, what's missing is that Lambo fear factor,
that knot in the stomach test pilots must have felt in the '50s
when they headed for the sound barrier in unproven jet aircraft.
Of course, you might think that's a good thing.
To be honest, I'm not so sure.
If a big Lamborghini is all about pantomime, drama, theatre, which it is...
then I want people watching
not just to go: "Wow, that's a stunning-looking thing."
I want them to look at me inside and think:
"Whoa, there goes Chuck Yeager Hammond. He's brave."
But in this, I'm not being brave.
It's as easy to drive as a big Audi. That's the truth of it.
I finally understand what they mean by that, is it Helsinki syndrome?
When people who've been kidnapped, when they're released, miss their kidnappers.
I don't know that I want to be in a big, loud V12 Lambo
that doesn't every now and again try and kill me.
I miss that.