The brake horsepower figure on the Urus Performante is rated at 666 which is also the number of the devil. That’s 16bhp more from the 4-litre twin-turbo V8 that lurks under the hood. Other big changes include new steel springs, a wider track, lightweight wheels, a new differential and specially developed Pirelli tires. The Akrapovic exhaust which comes as standard is also a lightweight system and overall, the Performante is lighter by 47 kilos. Now that may not sound like much but if you are a track junkie then I believe every additional horsepower or any drop in weight would matter. What you will definitely feel though is the new Rally mode which is exclusive to the Urus Performante.
So do these changes add up to a hair-raising experience behind the wheel? We got a short drive across a work-in-progress race track in Bangalore which turned out to be the perfect venue to test the Rally mode.
With the Rally mode engaged on the dirt track, the Urus Performante is as playful as an adolescent retriever waiting for you to get home at the end of the day. This particular mode allows the Urus to get remarkably sideways on dirt – it’s supernatural how unobtrusively it limits the power to keep you out of trouble but at the same time, makes you feel like a bastardized descendant of Ari Vatanen. In the long corners, the combination of torque vectoring, the Urus’ rear-biased all-wheel drive system and clever electronics worked so seamlessly that I was convinced I was a rally driver making this big old beast dance though it was the Rally mode doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The uprated twin-turbo V8 doesn’t feel very different from the standard Urus though it doesn’t really matter. The Performante is a seriously quick SUV and everything about it is remarkable. The way it accelerates, corners on dirt, gripping and sliding just when you want it to, with all the torque in the world… is simply breathtaking.