Lamborghini Aventador Buyer's Guide MSRP: $387,000

The stage is the Nardo Ring, and the star is the Lamborghini Aventador, an impossibly bright neon sign marking new territory in the land of supercar extravagance. Its performance? Extraordinary. At 2.8 seconds to 60 mph and 10.6 seconds to the quarter mile, it's the second-quickest production car we've ever tested, mere tenths off the once unmatchable pace of the Bugatti Veyron. But more impressive is how easily reached the Aventador's capabilities are; this may be the friendliest mid-engine V-12 supercar in the world. Not that Lamborghini has forsaken its roots. In traditional form, the all-wheel-drive Aventador is named after a bull and styled like a fighter jet. Its centerpiece (mid-piece?) short-stroke 6.5-liter V-12 makes 691 hp at 8250 rpm and 509 lb-ft of torque at 5500 rpm. It features a host of eccentricities that focus equally on wowing crowds and returning performance superlatives. Its chassis is built primarily of carbon fiber; horizontally mounted and pushrod-actuated Ohlins shocks sit at all four corners; its start button is covered by a red plastic flap you flip with your thumb to access as one might do to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile; and its wing and air inlets deploy like flaps on a plane. (A dash indicator relays the wing's position should you be too busy to check the rear view, or, in Italian fashion, simply not care.) Even its launch control system boasts the wonderfully grandiose title of "Thrust Mode," and using it is trivially simple. On the center console, select Corsa from the three-mode Drive Select system and flip off stability control. When "Thrust Mode available" appears on the tach, plant the brake pedal with your left foot and slap the throttle down with your right. The V-12 over your right shoulder settles at 5000 rpm. Sidestep the brake, and the four Pirelli PZero Corsas, with a combined width of 3.5 feet, chomp mercilessly at the ground, leaving bite marks through first gear. Shifts occur automatically, and each one thwacks your head against the headrest. For as striking as the Veyron-rivaling acceleration results are, straight-line insanity wasn't Lamborghini's primary focus. No, the engineers say their first goal was to make the Aventador a more accessible supercar, and nowhere is their effort more evident than during our handling tests.

The ease with which the Aventador generates an average 1.05 g around Nardo's skidpad is remarkable. It clearly communicates the onset of its limits and responds agreeably to sharp steering inputs and throttle control, transitioning from slight understeer to oversteer with eerie simplicity. Its likewise malleable on Nardo's massive 3.9-mile road course (see sidebar). It shrinks the harder it's pushed, an impressive feat for a 3816-pound supercar that's as wide as a Silverado 2500HD. The short-stroke V-12 revs so smoothly and so quickly, it finds the 8250-rpm limiter seemingly too soon. And while we were unable to confirm Lamborghini's 217-mph claim, the rate at which the Aventador reached 172 mph on the front straight left little doubt.