During the 2012 Paris Mondial de l’Automobile Stephan Winkelmann, CEO and president of Automobili Lamborghini SpA was naturally bombarded by journalists for an interview … which is most cases he gladly took the time for so he could explain the past, the present and the future of the Raging Bull make.
Don’t expect to get any secrets out of this charismatic leader of one of the most important super car builders in the world today, but some details did get clarified about Lamborghini … like the production plans for the Urus concept SUV for instance … Mr Winkelmann couldn’t confirm actual production yet, but he did mention if this large Bull would become available to the public this wouldn’t happen before 2017.
And there is a very good reason for this long delay : there just isn’t any production space available at the factory in Sant’Agata … if they would start building the Urus in the current factory it would mean production for the Gallardo or the Aventador would be delayed, and especially on the Aventador this just isn’t an option at this moment as the waiting list is already very long, putting a third model on the production line would just make things worse.
So it could take another five years before any shape of SUV based on the Urus concept would be unveiled by Lamborghini, and another detail Mr Winkelmann mentioned is using hybrid technology on the Urus … that’s right, Lamborghini is thinking about a hybrid powered model in the future.
At this moment the hybrid system is just too large to be fitted into the aging Gallardo or even the current Aventador model, the additional weight would really influence the power to weight equation in such a negative way that Lamborghini isn’t even considering this option for the V10 or V12 model … but in an Urus based SUV production model the additional space available and the fact such a model isn’t marketed as a super exotic road car the option of a hybrid engine would make sense.
Another detail Mr Winkelmann mentioned would be the fact the Urus might not be built at the factory in Sant’Agata anyway, producing the large SUV inside the original factory would interfere too much with the production of the sports cars Lamborghini is famous for, so we might be seeing the Urus built on another location and shipped to Sant’Agata for final assembly or finishing … remember the same thing happened with the LM002 back in the days which came fully assembled from Spain.
On a totally different level it became evident during the interview that Automobili Lamborghini SpA will continue to create one-off models like the Aventador Jota based on actual production versions, also very limited production runs like the Reventon and more recently the Sesto Elemento will keep popping up from time to time … remember Lamborghini built an entirely new building just for this … prototyping, custom work and small production runs … so during this interview Mr Winkelmann just confirmed that once again.
