Lamborghini rental
Kuala Lumpur

Lamborghini exists because Ferruccio Lamborghini thought his Ferrari had a bad clutch and got a rude answer when he said so. Sixty years later the company still behaves like it is proving a point. Where most of the industry downsized and turbocharged, Sant'Agata spent the last decade defending atmospheric induction harder than anyone: the Huracán's 5.2-litre V10 and the Aventador's 6.5-litre V12 are the last naturally aspirated engines of their kind that a normal person can rent and drive on a public road.

That matters more than the horsepower figure. A turbocharged engine makes its torque early and holds it flat, which is fast but emotionally uneventful — the noise arrives before the drama and the drama never really escalates. The V10 does the opposite. It is unremarkable below 4,000 rpm, becomes interesting at 5,500, and then the last three thousand revs to the 8,500 limiter are the reason the car exists. The V12 in the Aventador S is coarser, louder and less refined, and it is the more memorable engine for exactly that reason. Neither will ever be built again in this form.

On Malaysian roads the Huracán is the sensible one, which is a strange sentence to write. All-wheel drive with a rear bias, a seven-speed dual clutch that behaves in traffic, and enough compliance in the dampers to survive a trenched suburban road at low speed. The Aventador S is harder work: four-wheel steering that makes it feel smaller than it is at low speed, a single-clutch ISR gearbox that shifts with a deliberate mechanical shove and never a seamless slur, and a width that turns a Bangsar side street into a genuine exercise. The Urus is the outlier — a twin-turbo V8 SUV that is unarguably a Lamborghini in intent and unarguably not one in engine philosophy, and which happens to be the only car in the range you can take to Genting with four people and their luggage.

If you are hiring a Lamborghini in Kuala Lumpur, hire it for a morning with empty roads, not an evening in traffic. These are cars with enormous rear three-quarter blind spots, low noses, wide hips and clutch packs that hate creep. Given a clear stretch of the Karak at seven in the morning they are transcendent. Given Jalan Bukit Bintang at seven in the evening they are an expensive way to be uncomfortable.