Top Gear

Tonight, James asks a girl for a favour. No.

Richard listens to a man.

And I polish a bishop.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, good evening!

Hello, thank you, everybody, thank you. Now.

New cars come out so fast these days,

sometimes it is difficult to keep up.

Nissan, for example, said the other day that over the next six years,

they will be bringing out a new model every six weeks.

Happily, however, there are some car companies,

usually Italian ones, that won't be rushed.

That like to take their time, have some lunch.

And nobody is better at this than Lamborghini,

as Richard Hammond shall now explain.

When it comes to their big V12 cars,

their flagship battle cruisers,

Lamborghini really, really like to take their time.

Just these four - the Miura,

the Countash, the Diablo...

and the Murcielago, span half a century.

And now, at last, there's a new one.

It's called the Aventador.

It costs £248,000.

And it's the closest thing to a stealth fighter jet

that you'll ever see on the road.

It even has a starter button that's straight out of Top Gun.

The current boss of Lamborghini said recently that in the old days,

the order of priority for Lamborghini was top speed, acceleration,

and handling, in that order.

The thing is, for this car,

he says that order is the other way round.

Handling comes first, with top speed being given a lower priority.

So, let's find out just how low a priority that is, shall we?

Whooooa! Waaaah-hah!

0 to 60, 2.9 seconds.

So they still care about acceleration, then!

220 kilometres an hour,

250!

260!

270. 280 kilometres.

Oh!

290 kilometres an hour.

Oh my God!

Oh, OK, and relax.

If that's them giving top speed a low priority, bring it on!

Flat out, the Aventador will do 217 mph...

which makes it faster than the old Murcielago.

How Italian is that?

No top speed, OK, 270, no more, no more than that!

This pulverising performance comes courtesy of the Aventador's massive 6.5 litre engine...

their first all-new V12 for almost 50 years.

But what's surprising is that they bothered to make one at all.

You see, these days, a lot of carmakers are shying away from bigger engines.

BMW's new M5, for example, will have a V8 instead of a V10.

AMG are ditching V12s in favour of V8s.

It's called moving with the times.

But that's not so easy with a big Lamborghini.

A V12 is kind of its signature dish, it defines the car.

And the engineers insisted that whatever happened with the Aventador,

it had to have a V12.

And, of course, the by-product of a V12 is lots of horsepowers.

This has got 691 of them, which in Top Gear maths is 700.

That power is fed to all four wheels

through a unique design of flappy paddle gearbox.

It can change in less than 50 milliseconds, which...

I can't demonstrate that even if I blink an eye.

There are other high-tech features too.

We're in strada mode right now, which is for the road.

Let's put it in corsa, track mode.

Whoa, hang on!

All right, fella, all right!

That's absolutely brutal! It kicks you in the back of the head.

And now we're in corsa mode,

let's find out how they've got on with their new number-one priority...

handling.

Traditionally, always the scariest part of testing a big Lambo.

OK, here we go, I'm nervous.

I'm OK.

Still on the track.

I'm in a V12 Lambo, I just threw it at a corner at insane speed,

and it went round.

So why am I not buried in row 85 of that 747?

This is partly because the grip is just unbelievable.

Also it's got push-rod suspension which is very clever,

and unheard of in an road car - that's F1 stuff.

So even when it's coming under some pressure, like that,

the steering is just...

It's just... I'm turning a dial.

So, whilst the Aventador looks as Miami Vice mental

as everything else in its family tree, it's now a serious player.

The noise it makes is spirited rather than deafening.

The chassis is made from carbon fibre, not pig iron.

The air-conditioning works.

It's a proper car, rather than a machine that wants, most of all, to kill you.

And that makes me a bit sad.

Basically, what's missing is that Lambo fear factor,

that knot in the stomach test pilots must have felt in the '50s

when they headed for the sound barrier in unproven jet aircraft.

Of course, you might think that's a good thing.

To be honest, I'm not so sure.

If a big Lamborghini is all about pantomime, drama, theatre, which it is...

then I want people watching

not just to go, "Wow, that's a stunning-looking thing."

I want them to look at me inside and think, "Whoa, there goes Chuck Yeager Hammond.

"He's brave." But in this, I'm not being brave.

It's as easy to drive as a big Audi, that's the truth of it.

I finally understand what they mean by that, is it Helsinki syndrome?

When people who've been kidnapped,

when they're released, miss their kidnappers.

I don't know that I want to be in a big, loud V12 Lambo

that doesn't every now and again try and kill me.

I miss that.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Very good. It's beautiful but it's just not...

I think he made a mistake.

Hammond... Whoa, hang on, hang on.

Hammond, did you say, did you say Helsinki syndrome? Yes, I did.

You mean Stockholm syndrome.

Yes I do. Yes. What is Helsinki syndrome?

I think it's when you're an idiot and get your syndromes mixed up.

Yeah, I've got it.

Anyway, the Lamborghini. What you're saying is, it would be better if it were a bit worse.

No, it's like that McLaren MP4-12C you drove the other week.

It is brilliant, undeniably.

But somehow it's just not exciting enough. He's right, actually.

I've driven this as well and it isn't boring

but it somehow lacks that sort of Lamborghini theatre.

It's too refined and it's sort of too clever.

It's as though Lamborghini are trying to be Ferrari

instead of making cars specifically for...

Lunatics. Rod Stewart. Fish.

Tadpoles. What? No, people who like a laugh.

A Lamborghini should be an instrument of terror and this just isn't.

Well, now, let's examine the scale of their failure

by seeing how fast it goes round our track.

That means handing it over to our tame racing driver.

Some say that his favourite T-shirt

has a picture on the front of a T-shirt.

And that he spent all week waiting for a big cheque from the Germans,

because he too has spent the last 2,000 years

sitting on his backside doing absolutely nothing at all.

All we know is, he's called The Stig.

And he's off! Ooh, I love that pop as it shifts up.

Single rather than double clutch system.

Changes are still lightning-fast as he spears into the first corner.

Wobble under braking, shows how much speed he's already carrying.

He's got it all together for the exit.

"Downtown" by Petula Clark

Stig listening to Petula Clark in French, very unusual.

Clean through Chicago. Coming up now to Hammerhead.

Despite carbon fibre construction, this is still a big, heavy car.

Will it get out of shape? Not a bit of it.

None of the traditional Lambo flamboyance there.

PETULA CLARK SINGS IN FRENCH

Now, follow-through, the spoiler fully extends at 80 miles an hour.

He's doing a lot more than that now.

Fast through the tyres, just two corners left.

Here he comes now. Hard on the ceramic brakes,

an old V12 Lambo would have bitten him in the face by now.

Through Gambon and across the line.

Now...

Now, if we look here...

this is the old Lamborghini, the Murcielago,

the LP670 did it in 1:19. Here's the Aventador.

Ooooooh...

1:16.5.

CHEERING

That's interesting, isn't it?

So... So it looks absolutely fantastic.

And it's faster round our track than a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.

And I think it's clear now why Hammond and May hate it so much.

He's no idea. He knows what we're on about, he does know.

Right, it's time for us to do the news and we begin with this.

Attention morons everywhere.

Mercedes have a new hardcore AMG version of one of their cars.

It's from their especially ridiculous range of black editions.

Oh, now, I'm sorry, this is a car for connoisseurs.

It's a car for idiots. It's for people who know the difference between Sweden and Finland.

Yes, all right, sorry.

This is the new black edition of the C-class.

It will cost you £110,000. It's got the old 6.2 litre V8,

tuned version of that, rather than the twin turbo AMG engines of today.

You also get the seven-speed flappy paddle gearbox from an SLS.

But I think it looks fantastic. Ridiculous. It's fantastic!

I think it looks infantile.

It does.

James, you are so old, you think Werther's Originals are infantile.

Can I just clarify this a little bit? He has got the old CLK black.

Yes, I do. And I went in it the other day.

And you loved it. I hated it!

It's ridiculous! The ride is stupid.

It's like being in a touring car. What's wrong with that?

Nothing at all, if you're, I don't know, let's say, in a touring car race.

If you want to use it, let's imagine, on a road,

in, let's say, the world,

it's absolutely stupid. It's a terrible car. You may mock...

Thank you, it's ridiculous.

The fact is, the fact is, that the CLK black is holding its value

a lot better than, I don't know, 911s that you two have.