2024 Lamborghini Urus Performante Review: A Physics-Defying Branding Exercise

It’s easy to look at the Lamborghini Urus through a cynical lens. The Urus isn’t a car Lamborghini wants to make, it’s one it needs to make so it can maintain a profit margin healthy enough to keep its German overlords happy. I hoped that cynicism would fade from behind the wheel of the 2024 Lamborghini Urus Performante, one of the fastest, most high-performance SUVs on the planet. Surely, that would bring out the enthusiasm in the Italians, right? Unfortunately, not entirely. 

Maybe it’s unfair to compare the Urus Performante to other Lamborghinis, but I can’t help it. Just a few months prior, I drove the unhinged Huracán Sterrato, a brilliant, multi-purpose thrill machine. Despite it having a wider breadth of ability, added comfort, and even some off-road chops, the Sterrato oozes character. The Urus Performante does not. 

Make no mistake—the Urus Performante is incredibly impressive. It’s rocketship-quick, grips like a Formula 1 car, and has brakes that could halt a loaded freight train. The on-road, and likely on-track, capabilities of the top-shelf Urus seem to rip up Newton’s rulebooks, light the pages on fire, and then use said fire to light a cigarette. But it never does so the way a proper Lamborghini should. It feels like an Audi RS Q8 with some extra peperoncino. 

The Basics

The Urus Performante’s vibe of German familiarity is warranted. Despite its exterior flamboyance, the Urus is based on the RS Q8 and it’s noticeable. In fact, it’s been years since I’ve driven the RS Q8, but that experience suddenly came back to me like a hammer to the face the moment I stepped inside the Urus. 

You wouldn’t know it from the outside, though. The Urus has the same basic proportions as the RS Q8 but they look nothing alike. Where the Audi is typically Audi with its neat designs and typical German tidiness, the Urus looks like it was drawn by a five-year-old. Especially the Performante. It’s all sharp angles, harsh wedges, and unnecessary flourishes, some of which are tragically fake. And while I think it’s ugly with few redeeming design elements, I appreciate that it at least looks as batshit as a Lamborghini should. The Performante-specific touches like the bits of carbon make it look tacky, but at least the wing is cool.

Inside is where things get German. If you’ve been in any Audi in the last 10 years, there’s little new to see in the Urus Performante’s cabin. Sure, the miles of leather and Alcantara make the Urus feel a bit more special but its overall shape, technology, and nearly every switch and button are all pulled from a four-ringed parts bin. Sure, Lambo puts its digital skin on the infotainment and gauge cluster interfaces but the Italian veil is thin. Audi’s font and general UI are all there. The biggest Lamborghini-specific design elements are the drive select controllers, which look like aviation-inspired T-shaped handles on the center console. They’re easy to use and indeed look and feel quite cool. 

Driving the Lamborghini Urus Performante 

Hiding under its incredibly light carbon fiber hood lies another Audi product that’s been gently massaged by Italians in Sant’Agata—a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. With 657 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque, the Performante delivers as much performance as its name suggests. Stomp on the right pedal and you’ll very quickly be very happy that this car has carbon ceramic brakes the size of manhole covers. It’s fast. Lambo claims a 0-60 mph time of 3.3 seconds but it has to be quicker than that in reality. Sure, it might be an Audi engine but blowing the absolute doors off of genuinely fast sports cars with two car seats in the back (hopefully empty ones at that time) will never get old. I do wish it sounded better. Don’t get me wrong, it’s loud and it sounds objectively good. But not even an Akrapovic exhaust can turn Audi’s blown eight-pot exhaust noise into something worthy of a raging bull badge. 

It’s damn fun to drive, though. Whether it’s the massively wide front tires, Lamborghini’s clever front suspension tuning, the rear-wheel steering, some Italian black magic, or a combination of all four, the Urus Performante does things that no big SUV should be capable of. The front end is supercar-sharp, there’s enough steering feel, and it makes piloting such a massive SUV comforting—you know you can trust it when you’re pushing hard. However, its steering has the signature Audi lifelessness, the sound seems a tad artificial, and, as impressive as it is, it feels as bulky as it looks.

Life doesn’t give without also taking away, though. And that takeaway is its ride. The Performante is about as impressive as SUVs get but you’ll pay for that over a rough patch of pavement. Brutal is the only way to describe just how stiff the Urus Performance is. Even roads I know to be relatively smooth felt corrugated in the big Lambo. Big bumps in the road can detach retinas. 

However, get the Urus Performante on a twisty patch of (hopefully) smooth road and it’ll blow your socks off. It’s remarkably fun to drive in the right conditions. Pick a dime-sized spot on the road and not only can you nail it from behind the wheel but the chassis will grip, stick, and fire out of whatever corner you have it aimed at with downright shocking competence. For Performante-duty, Lambo ditched the standard Urus’ air suspension for fixed shocks and it makes a world of handling difference. You just can’t be too attached to any dental work you may have already had, as the ride will jiggle it all loose. 

The Highs and Lows

Go figure, the performance of a “Performante” is at the top of its list of attributes. But there are some other redeeming Urus qualities, such as the spectacular seats, a surprisingly roomy rear row, and the spacious trunk. There’s a lot to like about the Urus Performante and I can see why Lamborghini’s SUV is its best-selling model; it does so many things so well. However, for $265,000 to start, it better. 

That leads me to one of its lower points—its cost. For more than a quarter of a million bucks, the Urus Performante needs to feel incredibly special, like nothing else in its price point. And while its performance is baffling, so is the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT’s and that’s $205,795 to start. Then there’s the ride which is painful at times, some shockingly cheap interior bits like the little plastic button dividers on the center console, and some of the fake air vents on its body. Something with a Lamborghini badge and price tag shouldn’t have a single piece of cheap or fake-feeling anything. 

Lamborghini Urus Performante Features, Options, and Competition

If you were to snag a base-model Urus Performante, what would you get for your $265,000? Not as much as you might imagine. You’ll get 22-inch wheels, four-wheel steering, soft-close doors, and four-zone climate control. And, of course, the monster performance and handling capabilities. 

However, if you want the Parking Assistance Package, which is very much needed due to the Urus’ pillbox-like windows, you’ll have to pay an extra $3,913. This tester’s snazzy 23-inch wheels? $6,238. All of that cool carbon fiber is part of a $5,684 Full Exterior Carbon Fiber package. That super cool carbon hood? $6,090. After all its options, this example’s as-tested price was $355,213. 

For my money, there are only two SUVs in the world that I think can hang with the Performante: the Maserati Grecale Trofeo and the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT. The Cayenne Turbo GT is quite a bit cheaper than the Lambo while also delivering similar performance. The Maserati Grecale Trofeo goes for even less, starting at just over $110,000 while also having steering that’s as good, if not better, and is only half of a second behind the Urus to 60 mph. The Ferrari Purosangue exists one tax bracket above at almost $400,000 to start, but it has a naturally aspirated V12, sounds like a mid-engine exotic, and isn’t based on any Audis. And let us not forget that the Audi on which the Urus is based, the RS Q8 Performance, makes 631 hp and costs just $127,000. 

Fuel Economy

Let’s be real, no one is spending $355,000 on a 657-hp Lamborghini SUV and ever glancing at the efficiency gauge. The EPA says it gets 14 mpg city, 19 mpg on the highway, and 16 mpg combined. I never saw 16 mpg, and it hovered around 14 (sometimes dipping to 12) during my suburbanite/backroad driving, but I also didn’t pay attention to it much. For comparison’s sake, it has the exact same EPA rating as the Porsche, is slightly better than the Audi RS Q8, and drinks more fuel than the six-cylinder Maserati. 

Value and Verdict

When you can afford to spend a third of a million dollars on an SUV, value isn’t a word in your lexicon. But I’m no such person, so I’m going to talk about its value. Objectively speaking, the Lamborghini Urus Performante is bad value. We’ve already established that, on paper, it’s barely more impressive than many cheaper performance SUVs. So, for the money, there are better options. 

Here’s the part where you might be expecting me to say that the Lamborghini charm will sway you into spending the extra money over its cheaper, German competitors. However, I’m not sure it has it. I love Lamborghini, I always have. As a kid, no other car company in the world mattered to me. And the Huracán Sterrato is a gem of a car that fulfills so many of my Lamborghini dreams. But the Urus doesn’t have that same batshittery that all Lambos should. 

My brain says “wow” when driving the Urus Performante because, as cliche as it might sound, the damn thing defies physics. Nothing that heavy should be able to move like that. But my heart just never could connect. It isn’t bad—in fact, it’s great—but there are other great SUVs that cost significantly less. If I were in the market for something to haul my family, and haul ass, I think I’d pick something with a trident on the grille instead of a raging bull. 

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