Ah, so you thought the old V12 was dead, eh?
I guess you thought all that Net Zero talk about windmills and reusable straws and eating fried grasshoppers three meals a day would surely strangle old-school supercars dead. Which manufacturer would have the gall to build a gas-guzzling V12 when our new, improved world is filled with biodegradable, electric eco-pods that drive you to work and chirp, ‘Welcome to your well-being commuter space!’ every time you get in?
Well, seems it didn’t work out like that. In fact, the classic V12 – an engine configuration full of storied romance for car enthusiasts – has never been healthier. There’s a brand new Ferrari 12-cylinder called, er, the 12 Cylinder (though it sounds better in Italian: the ‘Dodici Cilindri’).There’s also a new Aston Martin Vanquish with a 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12.
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And then there’s the magnificent Lamborghini Revuelto.
Named after a badly behaved Spanish fighting bull (which kept escaping the arena rather than accepting its fate with dignity and getting stabbed), the Revuelto is powered by a new, naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12. Six point five litres!
Not only that, as if goading Just Stop Oil to throw more soup at a Van Gogh, Lamborghini has subverted all the best bits of automotive green technology – such as batteries and electric motors – and redeployed them to make the Revuelto a hybrid that’s even more monstrously powerful and responsive. To environmental campaigners, this is like Optimus Prime using Greta Thunberg’s bicycle to kill baby seals.
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So no, the V12 isn’t dead and this Revuelto isn’t just the first ever Lamborghini hybrid landmark though that is.
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It’s also the embodiment of where supercars are in 2025: at once old-fashioned, a dinosaur, going against the grain of our modern, climate-conscious culture, yet at the same time absolutely of its day, as high tech as an iPhone, a car that simply couldn’t be from any other era.
And when you experience it, first hand, you understand in your bones why cars like this aren’t extinct yet: because in the driver’s seat, they make you joyful in a way that a lentil hotpot just can’t. Top to bottom, inside and out, this new Lamborghini is sensational.
Sitting in a cockpit
First of all, look at it! Though honestly you can’t just ‘look’ at a Revuelto; you have to gawp at it, mouth hung slightly open.
It’s huge (over 2.2m wide and almost 5m long), but also ridiculously low (just 1.1m high). Aggressively wedgey like the iconic 1970s Countach, its details are futuristic, like the Y-shaped lights and those huge exhausts, which look like some kind of sci-fi fusion drive that will blast out fiery, neon-blue x-ray particles. (They don’t – it’s just CO2).
Flip up the Lambo scissor-door and you clamber down into it like you’re lying in an over-reclined deckchair. If you were in the mood to be critical, you could say this interior is excessively elaborate, like a Las Vegas casino breakfast, all angles and wedge-shapes with hashbrowns and chicken wings and maple syrup poured all over it.
The steering wheel is covered in so many switches and buttons, controlling a bewildering 25 settings, it’s like sitting in a Boeing 747 cockpit looking for the windscreen wiper.
I could spend ten pages describing all the modes and settings of the Revuelto’s complex hybrid system, but I won’t. Let’s just say, when you press the Start button nothing happens, which is… intriguing, in a Lamborghini. The Revuelto always starts in full electric mode, though bear in mind it has a tiny battery – just 3.8 kWh – and the electric range is only six miles (the battery in an Audi Q6 is 100 kWh, for perspective).
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So you soon need to turn the red dial on the steering wheel to Strada, or Street mode. Oof – now the V12 starts up with a deep, penetrative growl that rumbles through the streets like a North Atlantic thunderstorm.
From here you can twizzle the dial further for Sport mode, unleashing more power; and Corsa (aka Scary) mode, which switches the eight-speed gearbox to full paddle-shift manual and turns off the traction control. Like I say, it’s complicated.
Extreme performance
With such a small battery, you may wonder: ‘What’s the point?’ But the way the electric energy is deployed is just brilliant. The Revuelto is based around a new carbon-fibre cockpit or ‘monofuselage’, with the giant 6.5-litre V12 bolted into a frame behind the cabin.
It has three electric motors: one integrated into the gearbox, which assists the engine driving the rear wheels, and two more driving the front wheels, giving the car occasional four-wheel drive, depending on the mode.
The great advantage of these electric motors – and the reason they’re so attractive to supercar engineers – is the way they switch on instantly, offering maximum torque from a standstill.
Usually, designing an engine is a compromise between lots of low-rev torque (like a diesel train) or frenetic, high-revving power (like an F1 car). But with the e-motors assisting at low revs, this new V12 has been tuned purely for maximum higher-revving power. The result of this tag-team effort means the Revuelto’s V12 pulls hard from low revs but keeps going all the way to a wild 9,250 rpm, where it’s producing 814 bhp.
However, add in the electric motors and the Revuelto’s total output is a colossal 1,001 bhp. That means a 0-62 mph time of 2.5 seconds and a top speed of over 217 mph. It’s intimidating, driving the Revuelto.
Sitting so low in something so big is like steering a 1,000 bhp Greyhound bus from the front bumper – you’re aware of all that bodywork and weight behind you. The Lamborghini’s electric steering is light and smooth, though it maybe lacks character in a car like this. At least it feels quick and precise and it’s assisted by rear-wheel steering.
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The back wheels only turn a fraction of a degree, but it’s enough to help the car rotate on its axis, making the Revuelto feel surprisingly light and nimble. Once you’ve dialled yourself into the steering and shaken off the initial fear, you can start to indulge in all that glorious power.
There’s so much going on under the skin – electric motors turning on and off, front-wheel drive coming in and out, brakes being applied to individual wheels to ensure stability – but thankfully you’re not aware of any of it.
Instead, you’re just absorbed in the neck-straining, ear-popping acceleration and the sound.
Yes, the sound – in 2024, few cars sound like this Lamborghini V12, a rolling, growling, screaming roar, like a subterranean creature from Lord of the Rings.
It’s actually quite hard to see the 9,500 rpm redline on the road. Bloodcurdling speed is always accessible, easily, but the car is so savagely quick the next corner is always in your face before you’ve wrung out those revs. But occasionally, in the right gear on the right straight, you can visit that formidable place, when the howling V12 seems to take on a demonic ferocity.
What a car! Anyone who feared the first Lamborghini hybrid would be some kind of woke surrender can rest assured. The new Revuelto is a triumph and a technological sleight of hand – a car that makes something brand-new feel old-fashioned, and something old-fashioned feel vividly new.
Driving it makes you feel flamboyantly, hair-raisingly alive – which is ironic, isn’t it? Given that the V12 should rightly be dead by now.
This feature first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 94. Click here to subscribe
