The Lamborghini Urus Nearly Had A Wild One-Make Race Series

Some of the best racing in the world comes from production-based one-make series. Putting a bunch of drivers in a pack of equally matched machinery that’s capable of running close and hard inevitably leads to excitement – just go watch a highlights reel from the championships organised for the Mazda MX-5, Toyota GR86 or Mini JCW for proof.

The formula for all these championships is pretty similar – take a small, sporty and reasonably affordable car, keep the changes from the road version pretty minimal, and let a pack of win-hungry racers have at it. But there was nearly a one-make series for a very different kind of car – the Lamborghini Urus.

Back in 2018, when we were all still getting used to the idea of Lamborghini selling an SUV, the company showed off the Urus ST-X concept. It was essentially a standard Urus set up for off-road racing, with lifted suspension, knobbly tyres, centrelock wheels and a raft of FIA-standard safety equipment.

It was mechanically the same as the roadgoing Urus, but even in its original guise, its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 was kicking out 641bhp, so it didn’t exactly want for power – especially when various lightweight components and an interior crash diet saw the ST-X weigh 25 per cent less than the road car.

It all sounded very interesting, but even more tantalising was an announcement alongside the ST-X’s reveal that Lamborghini was going to build a small number of them and organise a one-make championship, to take place on specially prepared rallycross-style mixed-surface tracks across Europe and the Middle East. If anyone was still sceptical about the Urus, surely seeing a pack of them dicing with one another while skidding around on an off-road course would make them come around?

As 2018 became 2019, news on the planned series trickled out. Lamborghini hired motocross world champion Tony Cairoli to help develop the car, and an opening round was pencilled in for the 2020 Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final, scheduled to take place that autumn at the Misano Circuit in Italy.

In January 2020, we even saw a real Urus ST-X as opposed to the renders shown off just over a year earlier. What could possibly stop these plans now?

Ah, yes, 2020. It’s presumably factors outside of Lamborghini’s control that year that spelt the end of the ST-X project, as there’s not been any mention of it since then. The planned race series never happened, but Lambo did branch out into more off-road-focused cars in a rather unexpected way with the Huracan Sterrato.

In a way, it’s that car that’s reminded us that the ST-X existed, because in an Autocar interview, Lamborghini sales and marketing boss Federico Foschini hinted that more special editions in the Sterrato’s image are in the pipeline. Surely, that could finally mean the arrival of a more serious off-road version of the Urus, more than seven years after it was originally proposed? If that is the case, we hope Lambo finally delivers on that race series.