The Lamborghini Aventador’s Having Trouble Downshifting

Italian supercars can be finicky machines. That’s improved by leaps and bounds, by all accounts, for Lamborghini since its acquisition by Audi and the Volkswagen Group. But they’re still built more for performance than reliability.

Case in point: this latest recall for the Aventador. Apparently the big 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 can stall when that seven-speed independent-shiftrod transmission is downshifting automatically from low revs. So Lamborghini is calling in 1,700 of them in the United States (and untold more in other markets) to update their engine-control software.

The campaign affects both coupes and roadsters from the 2012-18 model years, manufactured between March 22, 2011, and October 14, 2017. So pretty much its entire life span until the problem was first identified. Considering that the automaker sold a record 1,095 vehicles in the US last year, and that the bulk of those were Huracans, we’d surmise that the recall encompasses most (if not all) of the Aventadors currently on American roads (or garages).

Included in that total are all the special editions and more exclusive models based on the Aventador, including both the coupe and convertible versions of the Veneno and Centenario. But those would represent but a drop in an already small bucket, considering how limited the production run was for each.

That’d make this the second recall for the Centenario we’ve seen this year, following the 11 examples that were called in just a couple of months ago to have a new label fit. Last year saw 1,453 Aventadors (and Venenos) recalled to prevent their gas tanks from being overfilled, leaking onto the exhaust, and starting a fire.