Lamborghini's new look: What you can now expect to find in prestige garages around the country

It’s quite obvious when you look at a Lamborghini that they’ve been designed to aggressively grab your attention. What only becomes clear when you get closer is just how low to the ground they are, barely over a metre tall in most cases, which means they are the only cars in the world that Tom Cruise can be photographed next to with his elbow leaning jauntily on the roof.

This is not because low vehicles give a nice sleek and sporty profile, it’s because the lower the centre of gravity a car has, the more dynamically it can corner.

The new Lamborghini Urus, then – a truly enormous SUV that stands 1.63 metres high and stretches more than five metres in length – comes as a profound shock. It’s like Rolex unveiling a grandfather clock.

Lambo fans, of course, have children and dogs like the rest of us, and in the past they were forced to shop elsewhere for their family SUVs. The famous Italian sports-car company also realised it was missing out on untapped riches.

The Urus is expected to make up a staggering 50 per cent of the company’s sales in Australia this year, at prices ranging from $354,500 to $420,860.

Because it is, notionally, an off-road car – albeit one you’d hate to get dirty or scratch – the Urus has many manly settings for things like Sand (“Sabbia”) and Snow (“Neve”), but more importantly it has an “Ego” switch, which lets you adjust it from Strada (“Street”) to Corsa (“Race!”), and this is where the true Lamborghini soul shines through all that massive bodywork.

In Corsa, the 4.0-litre V8 turbo sounds like nothing attached to any other SUV, ever, as it stridently shouts your arrival. In this mode you can fire your way to 100km/h in just 3.6 seconds.

Yes, it’s easy to question why the world needs an SUV that goes like a Lamborghini, but once you drive one, and experience the strange sensation of 2.2 tonnes of car making so much speed and sound, you kind of, almost, get it.

Where to park it

Perhaps the only problem with buying a car as large and sharp-edged as the Urus is parking it, so it would be wise to also buy a home like this Toorak mansion.

The residence comes with a garage spacious enough for five of your very favourite cars, and a built-in turntable.

Expressions of interest close September 18 through Sarah Case of RT Edgar Toorak, who says there’s a $9.3 million-to-$9.8 million guide.