Lamborghini Reventon

What’s this? It looks like a Murcielago auditioning for the Batmobile! It’s actually the Lamborghini Reventon, a €1m special of which only 20 will be built. Named after a particularly feisty bull that killed bullfighter Felix Guzman in 1943, the Reventon features a 6.5-litre V12 producing 650bhp – just 10bhp up on the standard car with which it shares its four-wheel drive mechanicals.

Think of it as Lamborghini’s take on the Ferrari Enzo-based FXX – an extremely low-volume machine for those who find ultimate supercars a little too common. Unlike the FXX, however, the Reventon is built for the road.

• So it’s a Murcielago with a bodykit, then?

Not quite. However, it is the styling that’s most notable here, the Reventon looking something like a high-speed collision between a stealth fighter jet and the Murcielago LP640.
Designed in-house by Lamborghini’s Centro Stile, the Reventon’s body is made, like the LP640, of CFC, a composite carbon material that’s both light and strong. High-tech aviation has been the main inspiration, hence the new, milled-from-aluminum filler cap and a flat green/grey paint scheme that suggests radar-evading properties – though we wouldn’t want to tempt fate.

• The lights look different?

They are. New bi-xenon headlights are accompanied by seven LEDs and a further nine diodes for the indicators. Out back, heatproof LEDs are employed due to potential heat soak from a hard-worked V12. Elsewhere, the wheels are fitted with carbon fins screwed to the aluminium spokes to generate extra cooling for the ceramic brakes.

Despite the Reventon’s radical proportions, Lamborghini claims it remains entirely functional, the new bodywork helping to better cool the engine and brakes while remaining entirely usable in a world of speed bumps and kerbs.

• Is the interior borrowed from the LP640?

The underlying basis of the interior remains the same, though the treatments of carbon, leather, alcantara and aluminum are strikingly new and, typically, exquisitely crafted. Again inspired by fighter jets, the instruments comprise three liquid crystal displays that are housed in a structure milled from solid aluminum and protected by a carbon fibre casing.

Unfortunately, all 20 cars will be built and sold next year to ‘friends and collectors’ of Sant’Agata, according to Lamborghini. Still, with such a premium price and exclusivity, we wouldn’t bet against a few replicas making it onto the road.