Lamborghini has been building up to this for a while. The SVJ in question is the 'Jota' edition of the Aventador - a name not used much by the firm recently, but applied sporadically in the past to race homologated and extremely rare production cars. In the case of the current flagship, it is being used to distinguish a track-focused variant - one uncompromising enough to seriously threaten the Porsche 911 GT2 RS's lap time on the Nordschiefe.
Given the amount of recent testing Lamborghini has been seen conducting at the Nurburgring since the spring - not to mention the 28-second teaser video it's just published, and some on-the-spot rumours flying around social media - you'd imagine the manufacturer is supremely confident of the car's ability to dip under its rival's 6min 47.3 secs record. It has been widely speculated that the SVJ's full reveal would be accompanied by the news that it now officially tops the 'Ring's leaders board.
Until that time, we only speculate on the Jota's specification. Dollars to doughnuts, it is producing significantly more power than the current 740hp Aventador S - or even the 750hp the 'standard' SuperVeloce was furnished with before it went off sale in 2017. The Centenario, the limited-edition model built in 2016, was tuned to 770hp and 509lb ft of torque. Given the arrival of the 800hp Ferrari 812 Superfast, it doesn't take a wild imagination to see where Lamborghini's own 6.5-litre V12 is probably heading.
Whatever the final figure, Lamborghini has evidently gotten deadly serious with the car's aerodynamic package. The SV was said to have increased downforce by 180 per cent compared to stock Aventador; expect the Jota to have dramatically built on those gains. A new front splitter can be seen jutting well beyond the nose, the sills now wear fins and - though you don't get a real look at it in the video - the fixed spoiler has gone from large to supersize, with three arms required to hold it aloft.
No less revealing is the rerouting of the exhaust, which now exits from much higher up in the body to prevent it from muddying the airflow running over that redesigned (and dramatically larger) rear diffuser. Almost certainly, too, you can expect the car to be lighter. The SV subtracted 50kg from the Aventador's kerbweight - assume that Lamborghini has found a way to handsomely exceed that figure.
Whatever the final detail, or even the size of the number hustled from the Nordschleife (if true, the early word suggests it may have taken as much as two seconds off the current record), the Jota is likely to be a serious contender for the title of fastest car in the world. And with a limited production volume of just 600 cars already speculated, it will probably not be among the cheaper ones either. We'll know for sure soon enough.
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