Lamborghini Urus SUV to get Twin-Turbo V8. But you knew that.

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The Lamborghini Urus SUV – due to arrive by 2018 – will get a 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8 rather than utilising the company’s current V10 or V12 engines.

The Lamborghini Urus SUV first turned up as a concept in 2012, and although we know it is going in to production – at a newly extended Sant’Agata – it’s still not likely to hit the road until 2018 after, perhaps, a debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2017.

But even if that debut is still a couple of years away, Lamborghini’s boss Stephan Winkelmann, and Lamborghini R&D boss Maurizio Reggiani, have revealed to Autocar that the company’s first SUV in a generation – since the LM002‘s demise in 1993 – will eschew Lamborghini’s current V10 and V12 engines in favour of a 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8.

The news may seem very familiar to regular readers, as we reported the self same Maurizio Reggiani explaining in 2012 that their new Urus would get a twin-turbo V8 to allow flexibility in design and engine placement, and to deliver improved torque at low revs – far more important in an SUV than peak power.

Reggiani told Autocar that the V8 will be unique to Lamborghini and will be the most powerful in its class, offering the right amount of power and torque together with the right chassis control. Which all sounds very appealing.

But whatever Reggiani says, it’s highly unlikely the V8 in the Urus will be truly unique, but rather a version of the same twin-turbo V8 used by Bentley and Audi but with specific Lamborghini tweaks to extract more power and different characteristics.

The Lamborghini Urus will look like the concept – but with a different interior

What was also confirmed is that the Urus will look very similar to the concept -despite there being six years between the concept and the production model – but that it will get a more comfortable interior with proper room for occupants, making it both flexible and easy to use on an every day basis.

It may still be two years before the Lamborghini Urus arrives in production guise, but it is stacking up to be real competition for cars like the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Range Rover Sport SVR, albeit a notch up in the way the Bentley Bentayga is a notch up on the Range Rover.