When you think about the Lamborghini Aventador, I imagine that one primary question pops into your mind: how well can it grill meat? Thankfully, this question seems to have been answered by one Aventador owner in China: poorly and expensively.
The bold experiment that finally answered the Lambo-as-grille question took place in parking garage, where the Lambo in question was parked alongside Ferraris and other supercars.
You can see how it all shook out right here, thanks to the marvels of modern technology:
Oof. Yeah, not great. So, at first, it appears that the flames from unspent fuel in the exhaust are doing a bit of cooking of the meat on a skewer, though there is an issue where the pressure of the exhaust itself deflects the skewer and meat away from the kiss of the exhaust’s flame:
This, along with the very intermittent nature of the flame and the rather noxious composition of the exhaust gases makes the Lambo a fairly poor choice for meat grilling.
It’s actually a lot worse, though, since the Lambo appears to have overheated dramatically, dumping all its coolant out and smoking like a steamship that set fire to a hold full of ambergris.
Based on consultations with our own ex-cooling engineer David Tracy, what seems to have happened is that the Lambo was being revved while cold, which means the thermostat was in the closed position.
This means that when the engine is revved hard and the water pump is spun, it’s producing a lot of pressure in the coolant lines, but with the thermostat closed (engine is being rev’d hard but not under any load, so it’s not really getting up to higher temperatures) there’s just nowhere for the coolant to go, so pressure keeps building to the point where something failed — a hose, or, as the Chinese captions suggest, the plastic coolant tank, which appears to have ruptured, disgorging the blood-red coolant all over the pavement.
At this point, coolant is splashed all over the hot exhaust manifold, so we’re getting billows of coolant steam, and with the coolant all pissed out of the car, it’s running dry, so temperatures are spiking pretty quickly.
It’s a mess, and the meat isn’t even really cooked.
The weird human-faced panda meme guy is right, here: it’s over.
Most local reports say that the damage can cost into the tens of thousands, which sounds about right for an Italian supercar. Weirdly, the repair bill would be peanuts compared to the car’s price. A Lamborghini Aventador can cost over a million dollars in China. The high prices of supercars in China is due to taxes and the premiums that automakers charge to Chinese buyers, Forbes reports.
I’m not sure if the takeaway here should be don’t try to grill meat with your supercar’s exhaust or if it should be only grill meat with your supercar’s exhaust when the thermostat is open, but I think either one is helpful, so, you know, be smart. Or at least smarter than this guy who likes exhaust-flavored meat.