Lamborghini Aventador SVJ (2019) Long Term test – five months in the £500k supercar

Supercars and snow don’t mix. At least not in the UK, where our perennial unpreparedness for proper winter weather inevitably sees us skating around on summer tyres for those few isolated days when we get a flurry of the white stuff. Chaos ensues, of course, but there’s something typically British about battling against the elements with inappropriate equipment.

It’s this Shackleton spirit that saw me heading out on the most middle class of missions – driving to Waitrose for essential food supplies – in a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, just as snow began to settle on the roads of rural Northamptonshire. Naturally the Lambo was running on Pirelli P Zero Corsas, the sticky compounds from which they are made having gone into hibernation back in November. Had I considered that the inch or so of snow that had already settled as I set off would grow to four or five times that depth by the time I would be heading home I… still wouldn’t have taken Mrs M’s all-season shod Freelander 2, as where’s the fun in that?

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Suffice to say I got some slightly odd looks from my fellow shoppers as I trudged out through the car park, they loading the boots of their Range Rovers and Audis while I pushed my trolley towards the Italian-registered Lambo, popped the scissor door and loaded my bags into the passenger footwell and onto the seat. An intrepid Z3 M Coupé owner stopped for a chat (evo reader, natch), both of us acknowledging the silliness of our respective means of transport and pondering that the drive home might be more of a challenge than we thought.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Aventadors are not the best machines for discreet, rapid getaways. When you have to wait with the cold engine bellowing away on fast idle while several hectares of windscreen slowly demist, it’s actually slightly embarrassing, though the disapproving looks from appalled quinoa warriors lifted my spirits.

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Off the main roads no gritting had been done by the council (too skint having spent all its money on cycle lanes, presumably), so the road and verges were almost merging into one white blanket, but the Aventador managed to find plenty of traction, even on long inclines. It steered well, too, so although the pace was circumspect, it was a lot of fun to slither this ridiculous 700bhp wedge along the deserted lanes.

Braking was less enjoyable, especially when heading downhill on compacted snow, the dread sensation of a pulsing pedal, the zizz-zizz-zizz of the ABS and very little in the way of useful retardation causing a spike of adrenaline and a few muttered profanities. Nevertheless I made it back home without incident – only to have to head back out to take the SVJ to John Barker’s house and swap into the Fast Fleet Supra. The decidedly dicey homeward journey proved just how well the Lambo performed, and how daft it is to drive a two-wheel-drive car in proper snow on summer tyres. Will we ever learn? I doubt it.

This story first featured in evo issue 284.