Lamborghini Urus Performante sold out for 18 months

The 2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante – the most ferocious SUV ever produced by the Italian performance car brand – has already attracted a waiting list stretching out 18 months in Australia, despite its $500,000-plus price tag.

Officially revealed to customers and media at a lavish Sydney function earlier this month, the Urus Performante is priced from $465,876 plus on-road costs – well over half a million dollars once statutory on-road costs are factored in.

Even at that price, Lamborghini’s answer to the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT and Ferrari Purosangue has already enticed a long list of well-heeled Aussie customers, according to Lamborghini Oceania sales manager Peter Crombie-Brown.

“Families now have the opportunity to buy a super sports SUV, so we’re seeing a lot of new buyers in the market,” he told carsales.

“We do have about an 18-month wait on these cars – we have a really strong order bank, which is great, and the response has been fantastic.”

Australians have grown accustomed to longer than usual waiting times for new cars due to COVID-induced production shortages and more recently shipping bottlenecks, but demand continues to remain strong even at this end of the market, where buyers new to Lamborghini are keen to personalise their Urus Performante orders.

“The awareness around our brand has just grown in Australia. There has been a huge response to vehicles such as the Urus Performante,” said Crombie-Brown.

“The thing I love about it [is] no-one just builds a white one – there’s greens and purples and some great combinations.”

Crombie-Brown said the Urus currently accounts for roughly 50 per cent of Lamborghini sales in Australia (slightly less than the 60 per cent it commands globally), and continued demand for the five-year-old SIV is assured thanks to a facelifted Urus range that will soon also include hybridisation.

“That’s part of our upcoming strategy for everything to be hybrid by 2024,” he said. “So you’ll start to see that project in the future.”

For now, the 2023 Lamborghini Urus S leads the facelifted SUV range – priced at $409,744 plus ORCs – while the Performante sets the performance yardstick after setting a new production SUV record at the Pikes Peak hillclimb last year.

The Urus Performante also matches the Purosangue, Cayenne Turbo GT and Aston Martin DBX707 for standing-start acceleration with a 0-100km/h time of just 3.3 seconds, and is faster than all but the DBX (310km/h) by matching the Bentley Bentayga Speed W12’s 306km/h top speed.

Although it delivers the same 490kW/850Nm outputs as the new entry-level Urus S (up from 478kW on the pre-facelifted Urus), the Performante’s twin-turbo 4.0-litre petrol V8 scores a lightweight Akrapovic exhaust system and remapped ECU.

The Performante also ditches the standard Urus’ air suspension in favour of steel springs that lower the chassis by 20mm and increase stiffness by 90 per cent at the front and 51 per cent at the rear.

Additionally, the Performante’s wheel tracks have been pushed out by 16mm, while the pumped guards are filled by either 22-inch forged alloys with titanium bolts or optional 23-inch wheels.

Also unique to the Performante are specially developed Pirelli Trofeo R tyres (optional).

No hyper-SUV would be complete without carbon-fibre, and Lamborghini hasn’t spared the Urus Performante, which gets a carbon bonnet, front and rear bumpers, wheel-arch extensions, front splitter and rear diffuser.

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