Aventador [Official] Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4
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The Lamborghini Aventador is a mid-engine, two-seater sports car manufactured by Lamborghini. Predecessor: Lamborghini Murciélago. Successor: Lamborghini Revuelto. Production: 2011-2022.
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Lamborghini Aventador on the Autobahn
200 MPH in the 2012 LP700-4
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 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.
Lamborghini Aventador on the Autobahn
200 MPH in the 2012 LP700-4
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 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.
Lamborghini Aventador on the Autobahn
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Oh yes we did. Inside Line recently caught up with the only 2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4 rolling display chassis in existence and had our way with it at a nearby Lamborghini/Aston Martin service facility.
What's more, this beautiful piece of one-of-a-kind automotive sculpture has been sold to an unnamed private owner in the Far East. Once it completes a couple more exclusive corporate appearances it's destined to be crated up and shipped to an undisclosed private location, never to be seen again.
I'm totally geeked out. Kurt Niebuhr's shutter finger has never been itchier. Let's get on with it.
I'll try not to muck up Kurt's photos with too many arrows, though some will be necessary here and there.
Before we take the tire off Kurt and I can see we're in for a treat. Aluminum abounds in this gorgeous double wishbone front suspension, but the spring and damper are nowhere to be seen.
De-tired and raised up on a lift, this head-on shot shows what's going on. The Aventador uses what's called pushrod front suspension, a variant of the double wishbone layout that uses a pushrod (green) where a coil-over shock might otherwise reside. The pushod is connected to a triangular bellcrank (yellow) that pivots about a fixed point on the chassis, indicated here by crosshairs.
In open-wheel racers such as Formula One cars, pushrod suspension removes the bulky spring and shock assembly from the airstream to improve aerodynamics. But there's also a significant reduction in unsprung mass, because a slender aluminum pushrod weighs a lot less than a coil-over.
The upper end of the bellcrank bolts directly to its coil-over, which lays horizontally end-to-end with its opposite number from the other side. Wheel lifts lower arm, lower arm lifts pushrod, pushrod pushes bellcrank, bellcrank pushes spring and damper assembly.
Even though they move around a little, the bellcranks and the coil-overs are not counted as part of the dreaded unsprung mass of the car. The unsprung mass tally stops at the pushrod.
That gold collar beneath the spring (beneath from a line-of-force standpoint) is a hydraulic lifting mechanism that allows the driver to raise the front of the car to keep the nose from augering in to driveway cuts and parking curbs. The fluid pipes aren't present, but if they were an application of hydraulic pressure would make this collar grow longer, which would drive the spring into the bellcrank and back through the system, raising the nose of the car.
The Aventador can use the preferred front-steer rack placement (yellow) even though it's an all-wheel drive machine because the engine and transmission are of course well out of the way at the back of the car.
A pushrod layout also makes space for the front drive axles. A pushrod is far more slender than any coil-over, but even here they use a necked-down (green) dogbone shape. Oh sure, we've seen others employ a fork that straddles the axle and then stacks the coil-over on top of that, but that getup requires far more vertical space than a slant-nose supercar like this has to offer.
In other words, pushrod suspension allows a low nose without forcing the use of abnormally stubby springs and shocks that would restrict travel and be difficult to tune.
Here's another view of the same pieces from another angle.
This is the bellcrank. There's a lot going on here, but it also looks bitchin'.
The motion ratio of a bellcrank setup is hard to determine without specific knowledge of several dimensions. Inputs enter via the pushrod, and they arrive well below 1-to-1 with respect to the tire. You'll see why if you go back a few slides and notice where the pushrod connects inboard of the balljoint.
From there, the pushrod's inputs act on the bellcrank at radius R1 (yellow). The bellcrank then presses against the spring at larger radius R2 (green), which produces more spring movement for a given amount of pushrod movement. This increases the overall spring/shock motion ratio realtive to the tire back toward the neighborhood of 1-to-1, possibly beyond.
Meanwhile, the stabilizer bar's drop link attaches at shorter radius R3 (orange), which means its overall motion ratio is closer to 0.50-to-1, maybe less. The stabilizer bar itself has very stubby arms to compensate, so it all works out.
You may have noticed that the upper and lower control arm connect to the subframe with tie-bars, a method of attachment more common in racing and other high performance applications where large bushings aren't necessary to promote ride comfort.
Tie bars are also popular in certain segments of motorsport because they allow for quick alignment adjustments by swapping out shims located between the tie-bar and the subframe. The suspension need not be disassembled to make such changes, only loosened slightly.
Furthermore, the effects of different shims thicknesses can be pre-calculated, reducing the need to make detailed alignment measurements at the track each time you make a small setup change. You still have to measure and reset the toe-in, but you'll know ahead of time how much caster and camber change a given pairing of shims will produce.
Shim-based suspension settings don't creep and move as can happen when eccentric cams are used. Sometimes the fast line around a track involves a little curb-hopping, you know?
The Aventador's front subframe bolts to a carbon fiber "tub", the central carbon monocoque frame structure that gives the Aventador's chassis immense strength and low weight.
Inside the tub are two mirror-image openings in the forward bulkhead. In North American trim, the left one admits the steering shaft and holds the pedal assembly and brake master cylinder, while the right one gives access to the HVAC system. These are of course reversed in nations that drive on the wrong side of the road.
The Aventador's hydraulic power steering rack sits in a crossmember right below the springs. The tiny pinion shaft (yellow) is aimed directly into one of those bulkhead openings.
Six-piston Brembo brake calipers are paired with massive two-piece carbon-ceramic brake rotors.
The ventilated and cross-drilled rotors are said to be good for the life of the car, which isn't as much of a stretch as you might think. No one's putting 100k miles on one of these babies.
The front brakes are stuffed inside 19-by-9-inch forged alloy wheels. And I do mean stuffed.
Moving to the rear, we see more forged aluminum and another pushrod and bellcrank.
The Aventador uses double wishbone rear suspension, with a toe link (arrow). Everything is mounted with tie-bars and the balljoints are massive.
The lower wishbone is biased toward the front such that its front half is a more effective longitudinal load path and the rear half a dedicated lateral load path.
Here we can see that the toe-link (right) and the lower wishbone (left) are almost equidistant from the drive axle, which means they're both sharing the lateral load. Massive balljoints on both underline how much load there is to share.
Here's another view of the same bits. From this angle we've also got a good view of the pushrod (yellow) and its lower mounting point.
As we saw in the front, the pushrod has a dogbone shape and is mounted slightly off center to make way for the drive axle which, by definition, has to be in the middle.
Higher up, the pushrod pushes against a triangular bellcrank that pushes on the spring and lifts the stabilizer bar link.
Unlike the front, input radius R1 from the pushrod (yellow) is about equal to ouput radius R2 (green) at the spring. Therefore, the overall motion ratio doesn't change at the bellcrank and stays at 1-to-1, the ratio it arrived at because the lower end of the pushrod connects directly to the rear upright.
The satabilizer bar motion ratio, on the other hand, is reduced to 0.5-to-1 or thereabouts because its link bolts to the bellcrank at shorter radius R3 (orange).
Here's another view of the bellcrank, the stabilizer link and the very straightforward (and strong) stabilizer bar mount.
The Aventador's rear springs sit well behind the mid-mounted V12 engine. Everything in sight is very well braced.
Yes, that's the muffler. Woof.
Just like the front, rear camber adjustments are made with shims that have been slid behind the tie-bar mounts for the lower wishbone. Only difference is these slip in from the top.
Toe adjustments are made with an eccentric cam at the inboard end of the toe-link because toe settings can't be made effectively if they're restricted to the step changes afforded by shims.
The rear subframe bolts to the back of the carbon fiber tub, bringing the engine, transmission and rear suspension along with it.
Take a moment to go back and look at the McLaren MP4-12C suspension walkaround. That car uses a central carbon tub, too, but it's purely structrual and completely hidden. The body panels are added to offer rollover protection and give the car its shape.
Here we can see that the Aventador's carbon chassis incorporates a full-height rear bulkhead and includes the roof (orange). The a- and b-pillars are also part of this central carbon fiber monocoque. You don't get much rear window, though.
Four-piston Brembo calipers handle the stopping chores at the back end. A single-piston sliding Brembito caliper acts as a parking brake. Both pinch a massive ventilated carbon-ceramic rotor.
None of the above would be of much use without suitable rubber. How do these massive Pirelli P Zeros grab you? They certainly grab the asphalt. For the record you're looking at 225/35R19 fronts mounted on 19-by-9 rims. The rears are 335/30R20 (that's another 50% wider, folks) and they live on 20-by-12 rims. Forged alloys all around, of course.
And that's what you get when you pay supercar money. Too bad it's mostly hidden from sight. Maybe the far eastern dude that bought this roller wasn't so dumb after all. Hard to drive one of these properly without killing yourself anyway. Might as well strip it bare and stare at it with a drink in your hand, impressing the hell out of your friends and business associates.
For the record, Kurt and I had Dr. Pepper.
2012 Lamborghini Aventador: Suspension Walkaround
What's more, this beautiful piece of one-of-a-kind automotive sculpture has been sold to an unnamed private owner in the Far East. Once it completes a couple more exclusive corporate appearances it's destined to be crated up and shipped to an undisclosed private location, never to be seen again.
I'm totally geeked out. Kurt Niebuhr's shutter finger has never been itchier. Let's get on with it.
I'll try not to muck up Kurt's photos with too many arrows, though some will be necessary here and there.
Before we take the tire off Kurt and I can see we're in for a treat. Aluminum abounds in this gorgeous double wishbone front suspension, but the spring and damper are nowhere to be seen.
De-tired and raised up on a lift, this head-on shot shows what's going on. The Aventador uses what's called pushrod front suspension, a variant of the double wishbone layout that uses a pushrod (green) where a coil-over shock might otherwise reside. The pushod is connected to a triangular bellcrank (yellow) that pivots about a fixed point on the chassis, indicated here by crosshairs.
In open-wheel racers such as Formula One cars, pushrod suspension removes the bulky spring and shock assembly from the airstream to improve aerodynamics. But there's also a significant reduction in unsprung mass, because a slender aluminum pushrod weighs a lot less than a coil-over.
The upper end of the bellcrank bolts directly to its coil-over, which lays horizontally end-to-end with its opposite number from the other side. Wheel lifts lower arm, lower arm lifts pushrod, pushrod pushes bellcrank, bellcrank pushes spring and damper assembly.
Even though they move around a little, the bellcranks and the coil-overs are not counted as part of the dreaded unsprung mass of the car. The unsprung mass tally stops at the pushrod.
That gold collar beneath the spring (beneath from a line-of-force standpoint) is a hydraulic lifting mechanism that allows the driver to raise the front of the car to keep the nose from augering in to driveway cuts and parking curbs. The fluid pipes aren't present, but if they were an application of hydraulic pressure would make this collar grow longer, which would drive the spring into the bellcrank and back through the system, raising the nose of the car.
The Aventador can use the preferred front-steer rack placement (yellow) even though it's an all-wheel drive machine because the engine and transmission are of course well out of the way at the back of the car.
A pushrod layout also makes space for the front drive axles. A pushrod is far more slender than any coil-over, but even here they use a necked-down (green) dogbone shape. Oh sure, we've seen others employ a fork that straddles the axle and then stacks the coil-over on top of that, but that getup requires far more vertical space than a slant-nose supercar like this has to offer.
In other words, pushrod suspension allows a low nose without forcing the use of abnormally stubby springs and shocks that would restrict travel and be difficult to tune.
Here's another view of the same pieces from another angle.
This is the bellcrank. There's a lot going on here, but it also looks bitchin'.
The motion ratio of a bellcrank setup is hard to determine without specific knowledge of several dimensions. Inputs enter via the pushrod, and they arrive well below 1-to-1 with respect to the tire. You'll see why if you go back a few slides and notice where the pushrod connects inboard of the balljoint.
From there, the pushrod's inputs act on the bellcrank at radius R1 (yellow). The bellcrank then presses against the spring at larger radius R2 (green), which produces more spring movement for a given amount of pushrod movement. This increases the overall spring/shock motion ratio realtive to the tire back toward the neighborhood of 1-to-1, possibly beyond.
Meanwhile, the stabilizer bar's drop link attaches at shorter radius R3 (orange), which means its overall motion ratio is closer to 0.50-to-1, maybe less. The stabilizer bar itself has very stubby arms to compensate, so it all works out.
You may have noticed that the upper and lower control arm connect to the subframe with tie-bars, a method of attachment more common in racing and other high performance applications where large bushings aren't necessary to promote ride comfort.
Tie bars are also popular in certain segments of motorsport because they allow for quick alignment adjustments by swapping out shims located between the tie-bar and the subframe. The suspension need not be disassembled to make such changes, only loosened slightly.
Furthermore, the effects of different shims thicknesses can be pre-calculated, reducing the need to make detailed alignment measurements at the track each time you make a small setup change. You still have to measure and reset the toe-in, but you'll know ahead of time how much caster and camber change a given pairing of shims will produce.
Shim-based suspension settings don't creep and move as can happen when eccentric cams are used. Sometimes the fast line around a track involves a little curb-hopping, you know?
The Aventador's front subframe bolts to a carbon fiber "tub", the central carbon monocoque frame structure that gives the Aventador's chassis immense strength and low weight.
Inside the tub are two mirror-image openings in the forward bulkhead. In North American trim, the left one admits the steering shaft and holds the pedal assembly and brake master cylinder, while the right one gives access to the HVAC system. These are of course reversed in nations that drive on the wrong side of the road.
The Aventador's hydraulic power steering rack sits in a crossmember right below the springs. The tiny pinion shaft (yellow) is aimed directly into one of those bulkhead openings.
Six-piston Brembo brake calipers are paired with massive two-piece carbon-ceramic brake rotors.
The ventilated and cross-drilled rotors are said to be good for the life of the car, which isn't as much of a stretch as you might think. No one's putting 100k miles on one of these babies.
The front brakes are stuffed inside 19-by-9-inch forged alloy wheels. And I do mean stuffed.
Moving to the rear, we see more forged aluminum and another pushrod and bellcrank.
The Aventador uses double wishbone rear suspension, with a toe link (arrow). Everything is mounted with tie-bars and the balljoints are massive.
The lower wishbone is biased toward the front such that its front half is a more effective longitudinal load path and the rear half a dedicated lateral load path.
Here we can see that the toe-link (right) and the lower wishbone (left) are almost equidistant from the drive axle, which means they're both sharing the lateral load. Massive balljoints on both underline how much load there is to share.
Here's another view of the same bits. From this angle we've also got a good view of the pushrod (yellow) and its lower mounting point.
As we saw in the front, the pushrod has a dogbone shape and is mounted slightly off center to make way for the drive axle which, by definition, has to be in the middle.
Higher up, the pushrod pushes against a triangular bellcrank that pushes on the spring and lifts the stabilizer bar link.
Unlike the front, input radius R1 from the pushrod (yellow) is about equal to ouput radius R2 (green) at the spring. Therefore, the overall motion ratio doesn't change at the bellcrank and stays at 1-to-1, the ratio it arrived at because the lower end of the pushrod connects directly to the rear upright.
The satabilizer bar motion ratio, on the other hand, is reduced to 0.5-to-1 or thereabouts because its link bolts to the bellcrank at shorter radius R3 (orange).
Here's another view of the bellcrank, the stabilizer link and the very straightforward (and strong) stabilizer bar mount.
The Aventador's rear springs sit well behind the mid-mounted V12 engine. Everything in sight is very well braced.
Yes, that's the muffler. Woof.
Just like the front, rear camber adjustments are made with shims that have been slid behind the tie-bar mounts for the lower wishbone. Only difference is these slip in from the top.
Toe adjustments are made with an eccentric cam at the inboard end of the toe-link because toe settings can't be made effectively if they're restricted to the step changes afforded by shims.
The rear subframe bolts to the back of the carbon fiber tub, bringing the engine, transmission and rear suspension along with it.
Take a moment to go back and look at the McLaren MP4-12C suspension walkaround. That car uses a central carbon tub, too, but it's purely structrual and completely hidden. The body panels are added to offer rollover protection and give the car its shape.
Here we can see that the Aventador's carbon chassis incorporates a full-height rear bulkhead and includes the roof (orange). The a- and b-pillars are also part of this central carbon fiber monocoque. You don't get much rear window, though.
Four-piston Brembo calipers handle the stopping chores at the back end. A single-piston sliding Brembito caliper acts as a parking brake. Both pinch a massive ventilated carbon-ceramic rotor.
None of the above would be of much use without suitable rubber. How do these massive Pirelli P Zeros grab you? They certainly grab the asphalt. For the record you're looking at 225/35R19 fronts mounted on 19-by-9 rims. The rears are 335/30R20 (that's another 50% wider, folks) and they live on 20-by-12 rims. Forged alloys all around, of course.
And that's what you get when you pay supercar money. Too bad it's mostly hidden from sight. Maybe the far eastern dude that bought this roller wasn't so dumb after all. Hard to drive one of these properly without killing yourself anyway. Might as well strip it bare and stare at it with a drink in your hand, impressing the hell out of your friends and business associates.
For the record, Kurt and I had Dr. Pepper.
2012 Lamborghini Aventador: Suspension Walkaround
D
Deleted member 25
Guest
Waouw, it's far from being extatic.
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- 8,624
Car:
2012 Lamborghini Aventador
Description:
A certified Lamborghini driver took this Aventador out on the track for one last run for the weekend. The rear passenger tire blew out and shredded the back bumper and quarter panel of the car.
Location:
Daytona Beach, Florida
But aren't Lamborghinis supposed to be a bit childish, a bit over the top, a bit "car looking like fighter jets" rather then cars? 
Remember, that the people who thought of that are not stupid. They know what we want from lambos, we want the childish stuff so they deliver. Want more grown supercars? Go ahead, find something else. I'm glad they didn't make the mistake of making it look more sensible. The sensible bit is inside, audi engineering and making sure nothing falls off, while the looks... Totally bonkers, I love it.
Remember, that the people who thought of that are not stupid. They know what we want from lambos, we want the childish stuff so they deliver. Want more grown supercars? Go ahead, find something else. I'm glad they didn't make the mistake of making it look more sensible. The sensible bit is inside, audi engineering and making sure nothing falls off, while the looks... Totally bonkers, I love it.
- Messages
- 35,940
Lamborghinis look cool but God gifted us with more exhilirating things like bathroom floor heating, adultery, Irish cream and Ferrari engines. The latter is the reason why my heart beat revs to higher bpm when I see a Ferrari but not the same when I spot a Lambo.
- Messages
- 40,638
- Name
- Marcus
Aw come on Sunny I know you all people like this car. That little detail isn't a deal breaker on a car like this. This car is a winner.
M
- Messages
- 13,230
^Yea of course I love the car, especially since unlike previous Lamborghinis this one technically breaks new ground the carbon fibre monocoque, the pushrod suspension, the ISR transmission, the new DI V12 - the most powerful NA engine in a production car right now. So yea, I love it and if I won a lottery tomorrow, yea I would be mighty tempted. But these little needless details to detract a little from the car - "Aventador" is supposed to be the name of a bull, why use a childish scifi font beats the heck out of me.
NarutoRamen
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,001
I will own this car one day. The more I see this car, the more I fall in love with it.
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Lamborghini
Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of luxury sports
cars and SUVs based in Sant'Agata Bolognese. It was founded in 1963 by Ferruccio
Lamborghini (1916-1993) to compete with Ferrari. The company is owned by the
Volkswagen Group through its subsidiary Audi.
Official website: Lamborghini
Official website: Lamborghini
