Revuelto | Is Lamborghini Played-out?

2023 Lamborghini Revuelto

An all-new Lamborghini launching is a big deal in the weird little world of supercars. Well, it's supposed to be... but for the first time in my life this once-in-a-decade happening leaves me almost completely cold. It's called Revuelto, which when I paste that into Google Translate comes back as 'Scrambled' in Spanish. Draw from that what you will...

Normally a new generation of V12 Lamborghini is a new revolution. The Countach looked nothing like the Miura, the Murcielago very little like the Diablo. This time? It doesn't feel very far removed from the Aventador. In fact, the proportions and essential silhouette are so similar that, despite Lamborghini boasting of an all-new carbon-composite tub, you'd think by looking that it's based on an Aventador (now a 12-year-old platform). Of course, this would have precedent, since there have been several low-volume specials based on the ougoing car – Veneno, Centenario, Siån, whatever those two run-out specials were – and the trouble with this is that when you trace the stylistic evolution of those cars (plus the Vision Gran Turismo project) the Revuelto looks like even less of a step forwards from what we've seen before. If you're a kid who's never seen a Lamborghini before then it might have some visual impact, but in any meaningful context it's merely... fine.

Ah, but of course, Lamborghini can point at the new hybrid system and say it's a state-of-the-art fresh start. A 3.6kWh battery mounted in the transmission tunnel powers two front-wheel electric motors and a third, booster motor attached to the new 8-speed DCT to supplement the freshly tuned V12 driving the rear wheels (claimed EV-only range is a token 10km). A decade ago, the likes of Porsche 918, BMW i8, Jaguar C-X75 and the slowly gestating Acura NSX prototypes were hailed as revolutionary for having such a layout. Now? Now it's just normal. In fact, so un-revolutionary is this hybrid system in the grand scheme of things that it feels more like they only did it to comply with shifts in the industry and its regulations – and to respond three years late to the Ferrari SF90 Stradale.

Like the SF90 Stradale, the Revuelto's combined engine and e-motor output just about hits 1000 horsepower (825hp from the engine) and the price tag will, after a couple of typically extortionate optional extras, one imagines, just about hit half a million euros as well. It is also, at 1770kg dry, arguably too heavy.

Inside, the triple-screen festooned cabin is claimed to be marginally more spacious than in the Aventador, with cupholders and a phone slot being introduced as well as Amazon Alexa's always-on data-harvesting eyes and ears in the cloud. Also newly introduced here is (presumably VW-Group off-the-shelf) mild ADAS functionality with automatic cruise control and lane keeping, which is amusing when you consider how many Lamborghini owners have proven themselves on YouTube and Instagram to be less than brilliant drivers...

But most of the press-release regurgitation is by the by, here. My feeling from looking at what this is, as a design and an addition to the supercar landscape, is that Lamborghini is running out of ideas.

2019 Lamborghini Siån FKP37 (a restyled Aventador with added ERS)

The designs they've shown in the 12 years between Aventador and Revuelto have all been iterations of a familiar set of themes. Chiselled surface changes, hexagon-based patterns and outlines, arrow-like LED strip lighting (which goes back to the 2007 Reventón), single-line side profile. Join those dots and you're sorted. That last characteristic actually goes all the way back to the Countach, which is notable because one of the more recent rebodied-Aventador limited edition specials was, controversially, a Hollywood-esque remake of Marcello Gandini's era-defining legend.

I think that this particular slice of high-margin collector bait is the biggest red flag for what I'm getting at. Given that their design boss Mitja Borkert had long been at pains to reference the Countach every single time the company launched anything, I ultimately wasn't too surprised that they finally let him achieve what he seems to have wanted all along: simply, the ability to say he "designed the new Countach." There was a moment described in a TopGear magazine article when it launched in 2021 that really conveyed this to me. Once the new car was finished, Lamborghini's design team showed Gandini a scale model of their tribute piece, like Borkert and co needed the old man's approval in order for the exercise to be complete. As if it was the whole point of this.

Gandini was polite about it... until, a little while later, he wasn't polite anymore. Oh dear.
In this prime piece of car designer handbags, one of the quotes from the maestro himself neatly sums up why a Countach remake is not a tribute, but mere hackneyed cosplaying: “each new model I would work on would be an innovation, a breaker, something completely different from the previous one. Courage, the ability to create a break without sticking to the success of the previous car, the confidence in not wanting to give in to habit, were the very essence of my work.” That describes everything the 2021 Countach LPI 800-4 isn't.

I'm sure there's been an undercurrent of feeling like now is the time for a tribute because we're likely staring down the barrel of everything we know, everything a V12 Lambo stands for, steadily coming to an end. But with that thought aside, the decision to ape an icon feels like an entirely cynical indulgence by a team of people who are losing their courage and confidence.

It also takes me straight back to the point of my own ramblings here. It says a few things about Lamborghini's design history that it's been doing extreme-looking originals for so long that a reborn icon felt like a wholly bland, formulaic and even defeatist idea; if they can't outdo themselves any further, then looking back is the next option to try. After getting publicly bitch-slapped by their hero for going full retro, they have instead had to shape (scramble?) the Revuelto by taking their current formula for both a V12 supercar and surface-level design iteration... and just using it again. Different page, same join-the-dots book.

Maybe it was easier in the 20th century, when they only really needed to compete against Ferrari and the Porsche 911 Turbo to be king of the bedroom posters and there was much less precedent for it all. Nowadays it's a lot more crowded in the super/hyper/megacar market with Pagani, Koenigsegg, Rimac-Bugatti, McLaren and a dozen precocious start-ups of varying legitimacy – plus brief visitations from grown-up OEMs like the Ford GT – all having their own goes at the sort of things that Lamborghini used to own.
But even so, I think it's time for them to take their Countach posters down from the walls and moodboards in Sant'Agata, roll them up, put them away... and find the ability to create a break from the past, the courage not to give in to habit. Rather than following the rules it set, to truly honour its now 60-year history Lamborghini must dare to tear it all up and write new ones. Otherwise its impact and relevance are effectively dead and buried.

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