The Lamborghini Urus is the type of car that makes dedicated car nerds (that’s you and me) cringe, but that gets the rest of the world excited. It’s like a Michael Bay movie, critically reviled it brings home the bacon.

And yet, when Motor Trend decided to put it up against a Challenger Hellcat Redeye etc, a car that is ostensibly a two-door coupe, it made intuitive sense to me. You could hardly describe two more different cars, but when they’re next to each other, their similarities come out.


Both are powered by a V8, both make obscene horsepower—admittedly the Hellcat’s 800 hp is more obscene than the Lambo’s 640—both are massive (seriously, look at the side by side shots), both are comfortable, both are kind of named after animals, and they actually aren’t as different in weight as you might think (~4,400 to ~4,800 lbs).

But the Hellcat’s facts should make it the better track car, right? More power, less weight equals quicker. Turns out no. The Urus is actually nearly 2 seconds faster around Laguna Seca—which probably is down to the brakes.

Still, hotshoe Randy Pobst says that the Urus is more of a road car than it is a track car. When it gets on track, the SUV’s weight makes it a handful and his effortful grunts suggest that he’s not just saying that to hate on big cars.

first published on fourtitude