Lamborghini Sian

Sián FKP 37 at a glance

What the name Sián FKP 37 means

Lamborghini named the car twice. "Sián" is the word for a flash of lightning in the dialect spoken around Bologna, where Sant'Agata lies. It refers to the electric part of the drivetrain, the first in the company's history.

"FKP 37" is a tribute to Ferdinand Karl Piëch, the engineer and long-time head of the Volkswagen Group, who was born in 1937 and died in August 2019, a few weeks before the reveal. Piëch had driven the Group's purchase of Lamborghini through Audi in 1998. The figure 63, used for the number of coupés and embossed on the rear wing, recalls 1963, the year Ferruccio Lamborghini founded the company. The full story of the brand is in our history of Lamborghini.

The V12 and the supercapacitor hybrid

The engine is the 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 known as L539, the unit of the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. For the Sián it gained titanium intake valves, new engine software and a revised exhaust, which lifted output to 577 kW (785 PS). The 25 kW electric motor sits inside the seven-speed ISR gearbox and runs on a 48-volt system. Together they deliver 602 kW (819 PS), sent to all four wheels.

Instead of a battery, the motor draws on a supercapacitor. Lamborghini said that, for the same weight, it delivers three times the power of a lithium-ion battery and is three times lighter than a battery of the same power. It is mounted near the gearbox for better weight distribution and is fully recharged by regenerative braking each time the driver slows down. The motor adds torque up to 130 km/h and can move the car at walking pace on its own, which helps when parking.

By our calculation, the electric motor adds only about 4 % to the V12's output (25 kW on top of 577 kW). Its job is less about peak power and more about instant response at low and medium speeds, where a naturally aspirated V12 has not yet reached its best. Lamborghini claimed the hybrid made the car about 10 % quicker in acceleration than the same car without the motor.

Design: Countach cues and smart materials

The body was designed by Lamborghini's Centro Stile and borrows the steep wedge and hexagonal details of the Countach, the car that defined Lamborghini's look in the 1970s. Y-shaped light signatures and hexagonal shapes on the rear continue the style of current Lamborghinis. The launch car was painted in a gold colour that Lamborghini called "electric gold", a reference to the hybrid system.

Two technical details stood out. Rear cooling vanes open by themselves when a heat-sensitive smart material reaches a set temperature, with no motor or sensor. Inside, the cabin used Poltrona Frau leather, the first 3D-printed interior parts in a Lamborghini and the portrait touchscreen of the Huracán Evo. Buyers could have almost any detail made to order by the Ad Personam department.

Lamborghini Sián Roadster

The open Sián Roadster was revealed in July 2020 in a blue launch colour called Blu Uranus. It has the same drivetrain and power as the coupé, and only 19 were made, delivered in 2021 and 2022. Its 3D-printed carbon fibre rear vents could carry the owner's initials. With so few cars built, a Roadster is even harder to find than the coupé, and it is one of the rarest open Lamborghinis of the modern era.

Price and rarity

Lamborghini never published an official price. At the 2019 reveal, US press reports put the coupé at around 2 million US dollars before taxes and options, roughly €1.8 million at the exchange rate of the time. The old version of this page quoted 3.6 million dollars, a figure we could not confirm. Every car had been sold by the time the Sián was shown, so it never reached a showroom.

Today Sián cars change hands privately or at auction, and values depend heavily on the individual specification. By our count, with 82 cars in total, there is less than one Sián for every 130 Aventadors, of which more than 11,000 were built from 2011 to 2022.

From the Sián to the Countach and Revuelto

The Sián was a test bed for Lamborghini's move to electrification. In 2021 the same V12, motor and supercapacitor went into the Countach LPI 800-4, a 112-car tribute to the original Countach. In 2023 the Lamborghini Revuelto replaced the Aventador with a full plug-in hybrid and three electric motors.

The comparison shows that the Sián remains the most powerful of the supercapacitor cars. By our calculation it has 36 kW (about 6 %) more than the SVJ it is based on and 3 kW more than the Countach LPI 800-4, while the Revuelto adds another 145 kW. Specific output tells a similar story: 602 kW from 6.5 litres is about 93 kW per litre, against roughly 87 kW per litre for the SVJ. Readers can set these figures against other supercars with our power-to-weight calculator. The Revuelto, with full plug-in hybrid technology, finally moved Lamborghini beyond the mild-hybrid approach.