Aventador test drive

A couple of weekends ago I had the chance to drive an Aventador and it was everything I thought it would be except for one little dissapointment. But before I get into the details, I'd just like to give a shout out to Jaclyn at Manhattan Motorcars in New York City. She's been great.

 

The flight plan called for Jaclyn and I to take an acelerated trip up the West Side Highway and then a return with me driving the whole time. I think we were out for more than a half hour. As you can imagine, NYC is really no place for a serious test drive but you take what you can get. When I'm ready to lay down a deposit, I'll ask for a better route. Anyway, from almost the minute we left MMC, the attention from on lookers was incredible. At every light I had to talk to somebody. One guy even jumped out of his car, ran in front of us to get a good photo. Enough of that but suffice to say, she attracts a lot of attention. So does the car.

Anyhow, we're stopped at a light, it turns green and the modest import next to me drives away. I step on the gas, just slightly and nothing happens. After what seems like 2 seconds (actually something less than .5 sec), the Aventador smoothly leaps forward and I think that within about 1/4 car length the clutch was fully engaged. Before we got even a glimpse of tail lights on that sputtering import, we flew past him, accelerating rapidly. And I wasn't pushing it at all. The next thing that hit me was the sound of the stock exhaust which sounds really good. I mean really good. Very aggressive and loud when you hit the gas, fairly quiet from the inside when you're pacing with traffic. When traffic openned up a little, I got a chance to feel the accelleration that this machine is capable of. Awesome to say the least.

Curiously, the Aventador felt refined in a way that no other Lamborghini I've driven feels like. In fact, the handling felt more like my Ferrari 360 than I expected. Unfortunately there was no way of truely testing the handling of this car on city streets so I'll have to wait for that. I tried the different performance modes and immediately found that I preffered corsa, mostly because it felt more like riding a bull and thats what's expected from a Lamborghini. I was also impressed by the fit and finish as well as the feel of all the buttons, switches and encoder knobs. But there was one dissappointing item that I hope to see banished in models one to two years hence. I hope Lamborghini/Audi engineers are paying attention when I say this. For a car that is this awesome, the digital instrument display of RPM, MPH, temps and pressures really was a let down. It's kind of cartoon like with no dimentionality and absolutely no sense of something truely exotic. It seemed cluttered simply because everything appeared the same, in the same plane, against the same backdrop. I've seen photos of the Reventon's displays and they are much more of what I expected to see in the Aventador. Exotic, maybe from a stealth jet and surely not from this world. With this display I was reminded of the economy of a single LCD screen with graphics. And economy is not a word I like to associate with this car. Gawd, even my daily driver has a better display. Lexus combined computer controlled stepper motors with needles and illuminated numbers slightly recessed which is clean, clear and readable in your periferal vision. In the Aventador, I felt like my eyes had to pick through the digital scenery to find the data. forget the peripheral glimpse until you get used to it. And one more thing. Both the instrument cluster and the multifunction display in the center console are polorized, so beware for those of you who wear sun glasses. It's not a problem for the instrument cluster but if you tip your head just 20˚ when looking over to see the other display, everything disappears. Ah well, there's always something but I will say that if you can ignore the display the rest of this machine is out of this world.

 

Doug

2004 Ferrari 360F1 (present)

1995 Lotus Esprit S4 (former)

2014 Lamborghini Aventador (future)

Thanks for the review.

Its good to hear that you like the exhaust sound

Thanks for the review. I didn't realise the display was polarised. Also interesting to read you had an Esprit S4. I own an Esprit GT3 and the Aventador will be my next step up. I had a passenger ride in a model from the Knightsbridge, London showroom. It is such an amazing achievement. Great review.

Good review, that ferrari is a decade old now so you should have been ready for a new age beast!

Great write up, thanks for the review(: