This is a story that traces its origins back to the 1970 Turin Motor Show, when the still fresh-faced Lamborghini revealed a baby brother for the Miura. It was called Urraco and its 2.5-litre V8 engine was claimed to produce some 220bhp. It was the first ‘baby’ Lamborghini, designed to compete with the likes of Ferrari’s Dino 246 GT and the Maserati Merak. Today this is its direct descendant, the Temerario, a car still with a V8 engine, but now displacing 4 litres and producing more power. Quite a lot more power in fact: 907bhp to be precise.

Are you impressed? Or are you wondering where this is going to end? Or both? This is an output no Can-Am car enjoyed until the era of the turbocharged Porsche 917/10. Formula 1 cars didn’t race with that level of power until the mid-80s turbo era. Yet here it is, not just in a Lamborghini road car, but its junior sports car offering, with the Revuelto flagship producing a four-digit output.

For me, how it deploys its power is of far greater interest and importance and, on paper, despite that enormous output, things don’t look great. For a start, this is the car that replaces the Huracán, trading a naturally aspirated 5.2-litre V10 engine for a twin-turbo 4-litre V8. It’s also put on around 180kg of mass, less than I expected given the car is physically larger and packaged also to include a battery pack and no fewer than three electric motors, two at the front, one at the back, but still an enormous amount of additional heft to cart about.

I think it looks great, a masterly piece of design given how much stuff it contains and how much cooling air it must require to keep temperatures under control. It’s also a lot more user-friendly than previous Lamborghini sports cars (I don’t include the Audi Q8-derived Urus in this). There’s more space inside and, at last, a deeper windscreen offering much improved visibility, finally fixing one of my biggest complaints of Lambos from days gone past. And despite its enormous complexity, so long as there’s someone on hand to provide a five-minute tutorial, even I can learn how to master the basic functions of its infotainment system, something I’d not say about many a prosaic shopping car these days.

So it’s less intimidating than you expect when you set off. It’ll do a handful of miles (well, three) in electric mode, which should at least allow you to clear your neighbours before the engine – unrelated to all the myriad 4-litre V8s available in other VW Group products – chimes in.

The music of the V10 has gone, replaced by that hard-edged growl of other flat plane twin-turbo 4-litre V8s made by Ferrari and McLaren. What it will do is rev beyond speeds of even any naturally aspirated supercar engine to date, let alone turbo units. Lamborghini says the motor is good for 10,000rpm. The car I drove had a hard limiter at 9800rpm but I won’t hold that against it. Get there and it’s like a small-scale war has broken out behind you.

How fast? I have no idea. I only drove it on the road. What I can tell you is that under full load in a low gear straights barely exist. What is perhaps more illuminating is how manageable it still feels, largely because of the way the hybrid system works to eliminate lag. Even left in its standard driving mode, mid-range punch is delivered instantaneously and with no drama other than the noise, and even that’s contained until you select a racier mode and it starts injecting neat fuel into the exhaust manifold just so you can hear it pop and bang. I wonder how long it’ll be before the fun police ban that particular game too?

“It is the magic that’s been missing from far too many Lambos”

But none of that really surprised me. What did was how confident I felt while driving it. The fact I wasn’t expecting to have much in the way of amusement in a Lamborghini with over 900bhp may indeed surprise you, but the truth is I’ve not always felt at home behind the wheel of four-wheel-drive Lambos, other than specialist equipment like the Huracán Sterrato and Aventador SVJ. It was only when the company produced rear-drive versions of the likes of the Diablo and Huracán that I started to bond with them.