The volcano was smoking gently as we flew in, and as we drove up the mountain some of the lava from an eruption mere weeks earlier was still cooling. It wasn’t hard to figure out the subtext here: This car is meant to be intimidating. Handle with care. Which is why the LP670-4 SV is such a surprise. It’s the lightest, most powerful, fastest Murcielago ever built. Yet it allows us mortals to tip-toe closer to the very edge of its truly volcanic performance envelope than any big-banger Lambo in history. If any $450,000, 661-horsepower, 212-mph, hip-high wedge of weapons-grade testosterone could ever be called a pussycat, this is it. Well, up to a point.

Once the R8 V-10 got the green light, the diehard performance geniuses at quattro GmbH were left alone to evolve their coveted halo car into the more surreal machine you see here – one that occupies the upper crust of automotive performance. That upper crust usually includes vastly more expensive big dogs like the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640-4 and Gallardo LP560-4, and the Porsche 997 GT2. Never mind that this quattro-crafted car costs around $50,000 less than the GT2, the cheapest of the aforementioned rides.

A Murcielago Spyder with 640 hp is certainly not a slow car. It sprints from 0 to 100 km/h in less than 3.4 seconds, and you may count on a peak speed of about 340 km/h. Can this be further improved? Yes! Horsepower multiplicator IMSA from Brüggen offers an engine conversion kit for the convertible [...]