Simply Abu Dhabi Magazine XXV

F or most road tests I like to get a feel of the emotions from a car no matter howmundane, so while we have reams of specs and PRmaterial available, I still adhere to the old practice of placing a recorder in the car as I drive. Most of the time it records me talking to myself, but for the 750bhp, 6.5-litre, V12 Lamborghini Aventador SV there were no words for a few reasons. One was that nothing I could say could top the shrill of that V12 at its 8400rpm change-up point, while another was that I was giggling like a child not believing that I was taming the wild bull in these wet and slippery conditions in Spain on our way to meet its grandfather. Yes, 50 years later I was to be the one who would reunite the Aventador SV with the original SV, the Lamborghini Miura, and we were to do this on the hallowed, muddy turf of the Miura family’s stud farm in Lora del Rio. Okay, Lamborghini is Italian and we were in Spain, it’s confusing, so allowme to explain. Italian tractor manufacturer Ferrucio Lamborghini was a fan of Spanish bullfighting. He knew his stuff and he knew that the best bulls were the Miura bulls. What he didn’t know was that Miura was the family name of the breeders and not the actual name of the bull. So with the prototype, as yet unnamed Miura car, he drove to Spain in search of the Miura farm, saw the name above the gate and drove right in. As EduardoMiura told me; “He’d never met us before, he just drove in thinking that the best fighting bulls were all called Miuras so we had to tell him it was our family name. “But here he was in the car eventually known as the Miura as well as another larger car, also a prototype, which they later named the Islero after one of our prize bulls that killed four matadors,” Eduardo said. Well that’s a little awkward because the common belief is that Ferrucio and the Miura family were already known to each other long before the car had been conceived – but here we were getting the real story straight from the family itself for the very first time. “My grandfather didn’t ask for anything in return and gave Lamborghini the rights to use our family name for this new car. After the production of the first cars Ferrucio came back to take some photos of the car on our farm in 1966. “Since then, four cars have been named after our family with the Islero and Murcielago named after specific bulls and the Gallardo which is named after a breed we bred in the 1840s.” In reality, the mix-up over the history of the Miura encounter on the family farm compared to the official line from the factory is largely semantics, as nothing could take away from the car that coined the ‘supercar’ term back in 1967. And here was its ultimate iteration: the 400SV Super Veloce on loan from the museum, for the first time, sitting side-by-side with the current SV the Aventador, and I had the keys to both. What’s similar? Well, both are V12s without turbos or any of that new stuff, but that’s about it. As the Miura SV hailed the dawn of the current supercar era, the Aventador sends off the pre-hybrid, turbocharged era in a grand farewell as these cars bookend the analogue supercar generation and it’s merely a coincidence that they’re both from the same manufacturer. With increasing pressure to meet tightening emission standards and downsize, the Aventador could well be the last normally aspirated V12 that doesn’t use hybrid technology to deliver its unrivalled performance. Which brings me back to my laughing idiocy recorded on audio. My Aventador was the roadster version of the SV with its removable roof and fold down back window so that I got the full, untainted V12 roar from behind my head. With no turbo whistle – or lag – to interfere, nor any of that noise cancelling malarkey that’s in most new cars now, I had nothing but the full aural orchestra of 12 uninhibited cylinders inches behind my head, mixed with a bit of rain and the smell of fuel vapour. Heck, was this really a 2017 new car? Yes it was and I stepped from the SV with a heavy heart knowing that this is the last of the line for proper, hairy-chested muscle cars that twitched sideways on the up-change and that screamed with such fury my vision went fuzzy above 8000rpm. I will miss you, analogue supercar. 1 9 1 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I