Lamborghini Aventador on the Autobahn

In any language, 200 mph is a big number.

When you try to punch through 200 mph, the air becomes an uncompromising critic. It shows an astonishing determination to resist anything arrogant enough to challenge its authority. At 200 mph, even the high-revving V8- and V10-powered supercars of the world are faltering, and the last increments of speed come slowly.

But not for the 2012 Lamborghini Aventador. At 200 mph it is approaching the mighty 6.5-liter V12's peak output of 690 horsepower, and the car is charging hard on the Munich-Garmisch autobahn, closing on the slower traffic at 120 mph.

At this speed the alpine scenery tears past at the periphery of your vision. A bend that might seem gentle at 80 mph looks as daunting as a corner on a racetrack, and the slower cars, undulations of the surface and the long straights force you to drive like a racer, positioning the car for each obstacle.

There is nothing in the world at this speed but the howling V12, the air trying the lift the right-hand windscreen wiper from its perch on the glass, and the heightened sensitivity from your backside. Inevitably you back off for traffic, but the car's steering and suspension lets you find your way past once again. The Aventador is seriously fast, blasting repeatedly from 80 mph to 180 mph in glorious bursts of sustained violence.

And at 200 mph, the Aventador still has a handful of rpm to go.

A Sunny Day in Modena
This adventure started with a Saturday stroll down the ancient Viale Canal Chiaro in Modena. Beckoned into a bar by Lamborghini technical boss Maurizio Reggiani, we're asked what we think of his new Aventador. With a stammer, we reply that we've only driven it on the Nardò test track in prototype form and then at the Vallelunga racetrack outside Rome. We've never driven far enough to draw any real conclusions.

"Well," he asks, "How far do you think you need to drive it? I can give you one of my engineering cars for two days."

The Aventador flits to 155 mph with a nonchalance that is simply disturbing.

The Bavarian capital of Munich (München to the Germans and Monaco to the Italians) is roughly 375 miles from Sant'Agata, the home of Lamborghini, and you need to cross three countries and one of the world's most famous mountain passes to get there. And if you take the back way through Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Munich's southern suburbs, the autobahn has no speed limit at all.

On a Monday morning we settle into a jet-black Aventador. The seats are narrow but comfortable, the engine fires easily and driving the Aventador out of the factory gates is a doddle. There's even a larger luggage space up in the nose than the Murcielago ever had, although we've never seen any pieces of commercially available luggage quite this shape.

The Aventador is a beautiful cruiser, more in keeping with a grand touring car than the violent, brutal supercar its predecessor was. At about 90 mph, it glides over the road in the mildest of the three settings for throttle response, shift action, steering effort and stability control, while the interior is quiet enough to chat without raised voices. The V12 hums calmly in the background, as though it could hardly be bothered, and the gearbox progresses through the cogs seamlessly.

On the Road
We stop briefly in Merano, a beautiful Italian spa town where everybody speaks German and wants to be Austrian. Unfortunately the traffic is thick, and we discover that the seven-speed automated manual transmission with its enormous single clutch is both better and worse than the Murcielago's old single-clutch design.

The Aventador moves off smoothly and easily, so you no longer look like a clay-footed idiot to those outside the car when you're trying to move through traffic a foot at a time. The downside is that the assembled computing power (the engine ECU is slaved to the gearbox ECU during this sort of work) doesn't always get it just right, because it frequently asks for about 50 percent more revs than seems necessary to get the ball rolling.

The sunny Po Valley is a distant memory as the Brenner Pass looms ahead. It's grand touring heaven here, and the Aventador slips into this mode as if it were born for it. As the all-wheel-drive car rolls into the corners, the chassis simply settles onto its outside tires, begs you to squeeze the throttle down early and carries ridiculous speed as you burst onto the straight on the other side. The ride is ridiculously comfortable, and the faster the car runs, the more compliant and resilient it seems.

But when we reach the end of the autostrade at Sterzing and press forward to the Austrian border, the temperature drops 20 degrees Fahrenheit in 10 miles. Rain comes down in buckets, although it doesn't seem to bother the Aventador, despite its wide, wide 335/30ZR20 Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires. From just 2,500 rpm, the V12 pulls tall gears up the side of the mountain pass west of Innsbruck. Garmisch, a ski town noted for its World Cup downhill course, the vicious Kandahar, lies ahead.

Munich Ahead
Garmisch is also famous for another reason. Just 10 miles from here, one of Germany's best autobahns begins. There's no speed limit for the 45 miles to the outskirts of Munich. And it's not straight or flat, either. Instead it's more like a two-, three- and sometimes four-lane roller-coaster. The fast lane on this autobahn is dominated by businessmen in Audi A6 wagons and there seem to be more Porsche 911 GT3 RSs per mile here than anywhere else in the world.

But it's not the time that you'd pick for the Aventador to give its all. For starters, it's pitch dark by the time we arrive at the start of the autobahn, and it's just too dangerous to unleash all the speed with none of the vision. Still, varying our speed between 75 mph and 125 mph shows that the automatic shift mode is far more sensible and predictable with the chassis calibration set in Sport mode, even though shift time is shortened to a ridiculously quick 50 milliseconds when you give the engine full throttle at high revs.

But it's civilized behavior that we need in Munich and the Aventador can largely provide it, except the broken pavement reveals the presences of the stiff-legged damping and minimal suspension bushings that give the car's chassis the precision it needs for high-speed runs on the autobahn. Despite the bone-jarring impacts from potholes, there are no creaks or groans from this carbon-fiber chassis.

As we're cruising through town at 2 a.m., a 30-ish guy in a Bentley Continental GT draws up at the lights. He knows what we're driving.

"Will you swap?" he laughs. "Will you sell it?"

At the next lights, he's swung around to the left of the Lambo. He says, "I'll give you $430,000 for it. Right now."

We respond, "Only $75,000 above Lambo's price to jump an 18-month waiting list? Make it $750,000."

"Where are you staying? I'll have an answer for you in the morning!"

Autobahn Running
The next morning we get a nasty surprise when we stop at the Agip station in Munich and the Aventador guzzles 17.2 gallons of fuel just 186 miles after its last drink, an average of 10.8 mpg. You won't see too many of these supplanting Teslas at Greenpeace HQ.

And then it's back to the Garmisch autobahn. This time we're in bright daylight, and with serious intent to hunt for the 217 mph that Lamborghini claims as the Aventador's top speed.

But the autobahn run doesn't start well. It's busy, as the Germans gear up for school holidays. There are too many trucks, which means too many meandering commuters filling up the fast lane. There are also too many heroes, like the two Englishmen in their XK Jaguars running line astern in the fast lane at 125 mph.

Even so, the Aventador flits to 155 mph with a nonchalance that is simply disturbing. Even at part throttle and two gears too tall, the V12 squirts us forward. When you're attacking at full throttle anywhere north of 6,000 revs, the car acts as if the horizon stole its wallet and it just won't stop charging until it gets it back or runs out of fuel.

Although 217 mph seems out of the question today, 186 mph isn't. That's because this car is astonishingly self-assured at speed. It has a lovely way of walking over bumps without ignoring them and just soaking up anything that might disturb the driver so he can concentrate on the car's grip on the pavement.

All of this gets better the faster you drive. Above 125 mph, the body maintains its attitude even as you feel the tires moving up and down, and the chassis is so rock solid that you have enough confidence to turn into sweeping bends at well over 170 mph. Once you get the car up to big speed, the V12 breathes with bellow, an angry concert of induction and exhaust tones.

Hauling down the car to more sensible speed isn't just a matter of standing on the anchors, though. Just like a classic racing car, the Aventador prefers that you give the immensely powerful carbon-ceramic brakes an initial brush from the pedal to settle the weight on the nose before you really get into serious stopping. The brakes won't fade and the pedal won't sink toward the floor, which is wonderfully reassuring.

Back to Earth
As the Aventador sits, ticking and pinging as its metalwork cools in the midnight Modena air, the thing that stands out is its tremendous breadth of character.

No supercar this side of a Bugatti Veyron copes with very high speed like this car, yet even the Veyron doesn't have its agility. This Lamborghini is also fabulous as a point-to-point cruiser, although it does lack cruise control.

The Aventador doesn't let you see all its technical advances, much less rub your face in them. The chassis structure is carbon fiber, but you can't see a speck of it anywhere in the cabin or on the bodywork. The electronics are faster, with more processing power, but you still use them in the same familiar way. The same with the gearbox, which works as before but in a far more refined way.

We can report that the Big Bull bellows its way to 199 mph (320 km/h) with an arrogance that suggests the car's claimed top speed of 217 mph (350 km/h) is well within reach.

That's the beauty of the 2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4. For its rivals, the scary part about this overwhelmingly brilliant car has only just started to stretch its legs.

Portions of this content have appeared in foreign print media and are reproduced with permission.