From Desert Dunes to the Digital Age: The Remarkable Evolution of Lamborghini’s Super SUV

There is a photograph of the LM002 that tells you everything you need to know about Lamborghini’s ambition.

A powder-blue behemoth, all muscle and menace, blasting through forest tracks at speed. It looks like nothing else on earth – because in 1986, it wasn’t.

That vehicle, the world’s first Super SUV, was the unlikely starting point for one of motoring’s great dynasties.

Nearly 40 years later, its spiritual successor, the Urus SE, will hit 312km/h and travel more than 60 kilometres on electric power alone.

The distance between those two facts is the story of Lamborghini’s most improbable, most spectacular achievement.

The journey began not with glamour but with grit. In 1977, Lamborghini unveiled the Cheetah at the Geneva Motor Show, an all-wheel-drive prototype built for military applications, featuring a rear-mounted Chrysler V8, a tubular steel chassis and a fibreglass body.

The US government contract it was designed to win never materialised. Neither did its follow-up, the LM001, which retained the V12 from the Countach but struggled with weight distribution in desert conditions.

It took engineer Giulio Alfieri to crack the problem. By relocating the engine to the front, a move that sounds obvious only in retrospect, he produced the LM002, debuted at the 1986 Brussels Motor Show.

Powered by a 5.2-litre V12 producing 450CV, it could propel its 2.7-tonne body beyond 200km/h. Pirelli developed bespoke Scorpion BK tyres just to handle it. Inside, leather upholstery, wood trim and air conditioning made it as sybaritic as it was savage. Just 301 were built before production ended in 1992.

Twenty-five years passed before Lamborghini returned to the segment.

The Urus, unveiled in production form in 2017, was not merely a new car — it was a reinvention of the brand.

To build it, Lamborghini doubled its Sant’Agata Bolognese facility from 80,000 to 160,000 square metres. Its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8, the company’s first turbocharged engine in its modern era, produced 650CV and 850Nm of torque, reaching 100km/h in 3.6 seconds. Its carbon-ceramic front discs, at 440mm, were the largest fitted to any production vehicle at launch.

The range has evolved rapidly since. The Urus Performante lifted output to 666CV, swapped air suspension for steel springs for sharper dynamics, and in 2022 set the production SUV record at Pikes Peak — 10:32.064. The Urus S, launched the same year, matched that power figure while prioritising luxury and adaptability over lap times.

Now comes the Urus SE, and with it, a genuine inflection point. Unveiled in 2024, it pairs the twin-turbo V8 with a 141kW electric motor for a combined 800CV and 950Nm, making it the most powerful Urus ever produced. A 25.9kWh battery enables over 60km of fully electric driving.

Top speed is 312km/h. The aerodynamics have been entirely redesigned, the infotainment system gains dedicated hybrid management displays, and buyers can choose from more than 100 exterior colours.

None of which would have seemed remotely plausible in 1977, when Lamborghini was trying, and failing, to sell a fibreglass truck to the US military. Sometimes the greatest stories begin in failure.