Billionaire Boys Club: a Super Saturday with special cars

Weekends are supposed to be for relaxing, catching your breath, and spending quality time with family and friends. Unfortunately, we rarely get to do so as weekends are often used to plug in the holes and fill the gap of unfinished work the week prior. While we at Inquirer Motoring regularly talk and see each other, we never get to do so in a relaxed and casual environment. It’s always about work, attending trips and local events and planning for what to do next. A get-together with the team, particularly the guys who love the same things was in order. We all love fine cars, enjoy driving, chatting over a good meal, Formula One Grand Prix Racing and fine watches, among other things. The issue was finding time to hang-out. Thankfully, our dear friends at PGA Cars Inc. heard of our plans and offered us a dream weekend too good to pass up: they would arrange for their latest fleet of test units, organize a decent driving route that would only take a few hours so as to avoid us rushing and still be able to return to our families, some photo ops and capped off with a sumptuous Chinese lauriat at East Ocean Palace. Then for some of us, take the cars home and return them until after the weekend.

We would be given the keys to the following cars: the Lamborghini Urus, the Bentley Continental GT, the Audi Q8 and Porsche Cayenne. We’d swap keys and cars as well as driving companions, enjoy the drive and each other’s company and take some nice photos, imagining how it would be to live like the top percentile in the world. And what a memorable weekend it was! The plan was to meet at PGA Cars Greenhills, drive to Petron-Dasma to meet the Bentley and Lamborghini, proceed to PGA Cars-Audi Alabang for some coffee and photo-ops, and finally head over to East Ocean Palace in Pasay City for a hearty Chinese lunch before calling it a day. Here we share snippets of our experiences and impressions of the cars we liked best.

Lamborghini Urus

Lamborghini’s Urus is touted as the world’s fastest mass-production SUV. With 650 horsepower and 850 Newton-Meters of torque delivered by the twin-turbo V8, and harnessed by the 8-speed ZF automatic transmission with all-wheel drive, the Urus can hit 305km/h making it one of, if not the fastest regular production SUV. It shares its basic architecture with the Audi Q8 and Porsche Cayenne Coupe, weighs 2,200kg making it the lightest in its class, and allows it to accelerate from rest to 100km/h in 3.6 seconds, and from 0-200km/h in 12.8 seconds, firmly putting it into supercar territory. The front brakes discs are the biggest carbon-ceramic rotors in production, measuring a massive 440mm and clamped down by special 10-piston calipers. Yes, that is not a typo. Deploy the brakes at full power, and your eye-balls bear the risk of popping out! Massive 22-inch staggered alloy wheels wrapped in Pirelli P Zero HT tires frame the massive brakes. You also get 250mm of maximum ground clearance when you select any of the three off-road driving modes. Interestingly, the Urus feels like a hyper-active SUV, or a super sharp sports car, depending on your point of view. It moves with impeccable grace, seemingly shedding it weight and mass on the move as it wraps itself around you. And if you’re not careful, the Urus will land you straight into prison as you’ll easily find yourself cruising at 20-30km/h FASTER than what you’re accustomed to. Build quality is impeccable; it feels like a well-engineered vehicle that is strong enough to withstand anything, and it carefully mixes German high-tech engineering with Italian flair, style and design. A bit overwhelming for the senses, and especially so since this particular Urus is the most well-spec’d unit in the country, making it the most expensive one. Though the engine is very tight and still new at just over 1,000kms on the odometer, fuel consumption figures in at roughly 4km/liter in the city, and about 8.7km/liter on the highway.