Lamborghini reveals 350km/h Aventador Roadster

It’s been delayed for more than a year, but Lamborghini has finally ripped the top off its ground-breaking new carbon-fibre super-convertible, the Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster.

The radical new Italian roadster has been ready for sale for more than a year, having been designed and engineered alongside the LP 700-4, but has been held back while Lamborghini tried to meet global demand for the coupe.

The Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster takes the 6.5-litre, V12-powered all-carbon Aventador and softens its ride without diluting its awesome straight-line punch.

It might now carry a two-piece removable roof system, but the Aventador LP700-4 Roadster still scorches to 100km/h in three seconds flat and flies to an astonishing 350km/h top speed, making it the second-fastest full production convertible on sale today. Only the mighty Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport is faster.

Despite a full book of orders for its Aventador coupe, Lamborghini is already taking orders for the 300,000 Euro (plus tax in Europe) Roadster, so expect the thumping new open-top Lamborghini to cost close to $1 million when it lands in Australia next year.

While electrically operated folding metal roofs are the norm for drop-top supercars like the Ferrari California, 458 Spider and McLaren MP4-12C Roadster, Lamborghini has gone its own way.

The roof system of the Aventador Roadster comprises two carbon-fibre roof panels that each weigh 6kg. The panels can be removed or retained individually, are each operated by two manual levers and can be stored in tailored slots in the front-mounted boot.

While not as convenient as the push-button operation of its rivals, it’s a big leap forward from the Murcielago Roadster’s utterly useless flap of canvas that took 10 minutes to take down and twice as long to erect.

The new roof system means the engine cover and deck lid of the Aventador has been completely redesigned, with a central “spinal column” running along the middle of the 12-cylinder engine’s vee to drain water and cool the engine.

Ahead of that, the B-pillar has been redesigned for its new job as a rollover hoop for occupant protection and to give the detachable roof panels somewhere to bolt into.

There’s also a new, electrically operated glass rear window that not only acts as a barricade against buffeting air flow into the cabin but determines how much of the V12’s noise the driver can hear as well.

Visually, the Aventador is black from the window line up, highlighting its convertible status, and also gets menacing new forged alloy wheels - 20-inch at the front and 21-inch at the rear - that are 10kg lighter than the standard Aventador wheels, almost offsetting the weight of the roof panels.

Inside, the Roadster carries over the Aventador’s full carbon-fibre chassis, designed from the outset with convertible use in mind. Already one of the stiffest chassis in production anywhere in the world, the Aventador also benefits from race-bred in-board-mounted pushrod suspension all-round.

The engine not only produces 515kW of power (or 700 horsepower, hence the ‘700’ in LP 700-4), but now boasts cylinder deactivation to shut down six of the engine’s 12 cylinders in light-load situations, lowering fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

The cylinder deactivation system chimes in when the Aventador is cruising on light throttle at speeds below 135km/h and simply shuts down an entire bank of cylinders so that the V12 beast becomes a quiet, economical six-cylinder cruiser.

While it restarts as soon as the throttle opens past a set opening, Lamborghini claims it slashes 20 per cent from the car’s fuel consumption at a steady 130km/h.

The system cut seven per cent from the coupe’s fuel consumption levels but will be standard from the start of Roadster production.

While Lamborghini has yet to release efficiency figures, the roadster weighs little more than the coupe, so expect it to be somewhere around 16.2L/100km and 375g/km.

Lamborghini hasn’t followed the car industry’s usual idle-stop path. Instead, it is pioneering the use of supercapacitors to electrically refire the massive, high-compression (11.8:1) V12 in 180 milliseconds whenever the driver touches the throttle or the releases the brake pedal.

Not only is this considerably faster than most current start-up systems, but it makes the Aventador 3kg lighter than before.

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