GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Lambo Centenario sold out

It’s officially a gift to itself and 40 customers to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founder’s birth, but Lamborghini's shocking Centenario could just as easily be a farewell to its longest-serving boss.

Unveiled just two weeks before 11-year president Stephan Winkelmann leaves Sant’Agata Bolognese to head up quattro GmbH, the Centenario is like the supercar you’d get if you thought the Aventador looked a bit wussy.

It’s a visually arresting piece of drama, with an enormous rear diffuser being the unusual eye drawer, and it’s about as extreme as any Lamborghini has ever looked. And that’s saying something.

A century after founder Ferruccio Lamborghini’s birth, the Centenario arrived in Geneva today as a redressed Aventador with 50 metric horsepower more extracted from the mighty V12.

Lambo has levered the peak power point up from 8350rpm to 8600rpm, and with it the power has climbed to 566kW. Sure, that looks a bit humble in the shadow of the 1103kW Bugatti Chiron, but it’s still plenty of grunt.

It’s especially plenty of grunt when the Centenario weighs just 1520kg, and it’s enough to hurl the all-wheel drive car to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds and from zero to 300km/h in 23.5 seconds. Lamborghini refuses to give it an exact top speed, suggesting only that it will reach beyond 350km/h.

And the braking system, based around its carbon-ceramic discs are strong enough to haul it back down from 100km/h to zero in 30 metres or from 300km/h in 290 metres. It also uses variable aero technology to shift its rear wing 150mm up from the body, and to adjust the angle of the wing in the airflow to suit how much downforce the car expects to need.

Based around the same carbon-fibre monocoque as the Aventador, it boasts the same 35,000Nm/degree torsional rigidity, but it adds something completely new for Lamborghini.

It uses a rear-wheel steering system to tighten turning circles at low speeds by turning the rear wheels in the opposite direction to the front wheels, then turning them in the same direction at higher speeds to boost stability. Lamborghini is a bit shy on giving the exact measurements of the rear-wheel steer system, though.

It also rides on magneto-rheological dampers, which were pre-engineered for the Aventador from its earliest days, but only found their way into the car at its mid-life technical upgrade.

At 4924mm long, the Centenario should be easy to notice, though not in traffic, where its 1143mm height means you’ll be lucky to spot it in a crowd, even riding on the 20-inch front and 21-inch rear rims that are custom built for just this car.

It’s very Aventador inside, but that means it has a 10.1-inch multimedia screen and it’s civilised enough to have Apple CarPlay, though good luck hearing anything you might want to play and even better luck with getting voice recognition to figure you out with a V12 bellowing in the background at 8600rpm.

While the Geneva show car was rendered in exposed carbon-fibre, that was the choice of its owner, because it’s an actual customer car. Other cars will be whatever colour their owners prefer, too.

Not that it will be hard for Lamborghini to keep track of. It’s only building 20 coupes and 20 convertibles, at the bargain basement price of €1.75 million ($A2.65m) a pop. And they’re all sold already, so forget about it.

And if you think that’s a bit steep for a rebodied Aventador with a fancy rear-wheel steering system and a bit more grunt (and four times the price of the Aventador Superveloce), remember that it’s actually quite a bit cheaper than the Veneno was.