Rejoice: The NA Lamborghini V12 Is Going Nowhere

Grab the champagne and don your party hat, because it looks like the normally-aspirated Lamborghini V12 is here to stay.

We’d been told by previous Lamborghini boss Stephan Winkelmann that future cars would have to be turbocharged in order to meet emissions, but current top dog Stefano Domenicali, former Ferrari F1 team principal, says the Raging Bull needs to stay different.

At the media launch of the new Aventador S in Spain, he hinted strongly that turbocharging will be left to Volkswagen Group siblings Porsche and Bentley.

CarAdvice quotes him as saying: “We want to be different, we don’t want to follow the route of the others,” Domenicali said. “We are puristic in that respect. The top priority for us is to retain the feel from a naturally aspirated engine.

“The Aventador has more than five or six more years to run and the next platform also has a V12 at the centre of the project.

“Our position in the [Volkswagen] group must be different, and a naturally aspirated V12 engine is part of that difference.”

He doesn’t subscribe to the view that not turbocharging will leave Lamborghini behind. “I don’t think we will be left behind at all by not adopting turbo charging. There is space for us to be different.

“We look at new models, of course, but Aventador – or that high-level super sports car – will remain a very, very specific car,” he said. One for cutting-edge winter sports, perhaps.

However, he did say that some form of electrification is inevitable – but not imminent. “I think that the V12 is still alive, to be extended, because it is such an important part of our tradition and heritage,” he said. “The future of the V12 is still important.

“Emissions are important of course, and our goal is always to improve the efficiency of the engine, but with our numbers we don’t see realistic issues in the short term.”

You can drink that champagne, now.