What's the difference?
Honda built its four-wheeled automotive empire on the back of small cars, flying in the face of 1970s convention that bigger was better. As the ubiquitous Civic grew larger and larger, a niche for a smaller car appeared, and that niche was subsequently filled by the City in sedan guise, and the Jazz hatch that sits alongside it.
The buying public, however, is simply not as interested as it once was in small hatches and sedans, and Honda, along with other importers, is feeling the pinch when it comes to slumping sales for its smaller models.
But are we all missing out on something here? After all, the Thai-built City is priced from a rock-bottom $15,990 in base manual form – which is not a lot of money for a Honda.
We’re trying the range-topping, $21,590 VTi-L to see what we may have been missing.
Lamborghini is famous for making glamorous supercars whose pilots seem so carefree they don’t appear to need a boot, or back seats, or even families.
They don’t even seem to mind them being so low they have to get in and out on all fours – well that’s how I need to do it, anyway.
Yup, Lamborghini is famous for these exotic race cars for the road… not SUVs.
But it will be, I know it.
I know, because the new Lamborghini Urus came to stay with my family and we torture tested it, not on the track or off-road, but in the 'burbs doing the shopping, the school drop-offs, braving multi-storey car parks and the potholed roads daily.
While I never like to give the game away this early in a review, I need to say the Urus is astounding. This is truly a super SUV that is every bit as Lamborghini as I hoped, but with a big difference – you can live with it.
Here’s why.
Small sedan sales are on the wane, and as a result, the cars that remain in the market often aren’t the best in a brand’s lineup.
This is the case with the Honda City. While it’s got plenty of space for passengers and it’s economical, the performance of the drivetrain in terms of composure leaves a lot to be desired.
The underdone steering, too, makes the car uncomfortable for passengers more often than not, while the buggy, hard-to-use multimedia system is unforgivable in an almost-$22,000 car.
Put it this way… the larger, newer, more refined base model Honda Civic is tantalisingly close in price to the top-spec City, and we know which side of the dealership we’d be walking towards.
Lamborghini has nailed it. The Urus is a super SUV that’s fast, dynamic, and has Lamborghini looks, but just as importantly it’s practical, spacious, comfortable and easy to drive. You’re not going to find those last four attributes in a sentence about an Aventador.
Where the Urus loses marks is in terms of warranty, value for money and fuel consumption.
I didn’t take the Urus on the Corsa nor the Neve, nor Sabbia and Terra, but as I said in my video we know this SUV is capable on the track and that it can go off-road.
What I really wanted to see was how well it handled regular life. Any competent SUV can deal with shopping centre car parks, dropping kids off at school, carrying boxes and bags, and of course fitting and being driven as you would any car.
The Urus is a Lamborghini anybody could drive, pretty much anywhere.