Three days in Munich, no fixed itinerary, just a car worth the trip. That’s the brief these three super-SUVs are built to answer — not a shared platform’s worth of overlapping SUVs, but three genuinely different ways of spending a long weekend behind the wheel of something serious: the Ferrari Purosangue, the Lamborghini Urus S, and the BMW X5M Competition.
The numbers
| Ferrari Purosangue | Lamborghini Urus S | BMW X5M Competition | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Engine | 6.5L naturally aspirated V12 | 4.0L twin-turbo V8 | 4.4L twin-turbo V8 |
| Horsepower | 725 hp | 666 hp | 625 hp |
| Torque | ~716 Nm | ~850 Nm | ~750 Nm |
| 0–100 km/h | 3.3 sec | 3.5 sec | 3.8 sec |
| Top speed | 310 km/h | 305 km/h | 290 km/h |
| Purchase price (from) | ~€390,000+ | ~€204,000+ | ~€146,000+ |
| Rental (per day) | ~€1,800 | ~€1,600 | ~€750 |
| Drivetrain | AWD | AWD | AWD |
On paper the Purosangue wins most performance columns except torque, where the Urus S’s twin-turbo V8 actually out-muscles it. In practice, the gap that matters most between these three cars isn’t any single number — it’s what the engine sounds like at 6,000 rpm and how each one steers through a Bavarian back road.
What sets them apart on the road
The Purosangue is the only one of the three with a naturally aspirated V12, and it’s the reason to choose it over the other two regardless of price. There’s no turbo lag, no artificial engine note piped through the speakers — just a 6.5-liter engine that wants to rev, in a body that happens to sit higher off the ground than a 296 or a Roma. The rear-hinged back doors, the four individual bucket seats, and a driving position closer to a sports car than an SUV all reinforce the same idea: Ferrari built this car to not feel like a compromise, and on the road it mostly succeeds. Note the four-seat limit, though — if your group is five, this one’s out regardless of how good it sounds.
The Urus S trades the V12 for a twin-turbo V8 shared with other VW Group performance models, and the difference shows immediately in how it delivers power: more low-end shove, less drama building toward redline, and — per the torque figures above — a genuinely brutal mid-range that makes overtaking on the Autobahn feel almost casual. What it does better than the Purosangue is outright drama at a standstill — the styling is more aggressive, the interior more overtly a “supercar SUV” with its wraparound cockpit and exposed carbon trim. It’s also, worth noting, the one of the three most people have actually seen in person before — Lamborghini’s SUV has become a familiar sight in a way the rarer Purosangue hasn’t.
The X5M Competition is the outlier, and deliberately so. It’s not trying to be an exotic — it’s the car for anyone who wants genuine performance (625 hp is not a small number, and the Competition package sharpens the standard X5M noticeably) without the insurance excess, the fuel bills, or the attention that comes with a Ferrari badge on a hire car. The interior is more restrained, the tech more familiar to anyone who’s driven a recent BMW, and the whole experience is engineered to disappear into the background in a way the other two never will. It’s also, at under half the daily rental rate of the other two, the one you can book without a second thought.
A bit of context on each car
The Purosangue matters partly because of what it represents: it’s Ferrari’s first four-door, four-seat production car, and the company held out against building an SUV longer than almost any other manufacturer in this segment before finally releasing it in 2022. Ferrari insists on calling it something other than an SUV internally — the marketing language leans on words like “FUV” — largely because the engineering brief genuinely was closer to “make a Ferrari that happens to be tall” than “make an SUV with a prancing horse on it.” Driving one, the distinction actually lands, and at a purchase price well north of €390,000, it’s also priced like the halo product it is rather than a volume model.
The Urus, by contrast, has been central to Lamborghini’s business for years rather than a recent addition — it consistently outsells the rest of the brand’s lineup combined, and the “S” designation on this particular Urus places it in the current mid-tier of the range, above the standard car and below the more track-focused Performante. It’s a car built on the same platform as the Bentayga and the Cayenne, which is worth knowing mostly because it explains why the Urus manages genuine daily comfort alongside its performance numbers — it isn’t a stripped-out track SUV wearing a Lamborghini badge, and at roughly half the Purosangue’s purchase price, it’s the more attainable of the two exotics.
The X5M Competition sits at the top of BMW’s own X5 range, and the “Competition” package specifically adds power, stiffer suspension tuning, and bigger brakes over the standard X5 M — it’s BMW’s answer to “what if the M division didn’t hold back on the SUV.” It shares its basic drivetrain architecture with the M5, which is a useful reference point if you’ve driven one: expect similar delivery, wrapped in a taller, heavier body that still manages to hide most of that extra mass surprisingly well through a corner — at roughly a third of the Purosangue’s purchase price.
Practical considerations
All three seat comfortably for their stated capacity and carry a weekend’s luggage without difficulty — though the Purosangue’s four-seat limit is worth double-checking against your group size before anything else on this list. Weather is also a real factor outside peak summer: all three run all-wheel drive, which takes the edge off a wet or even lightly snowy Bavarian back road in a way none of the fleet’s rear-drive coupes can match.
Insurance and fuel costs scale roughly with the daily rate — the Purosangue and Urus S carry a higher excess and drink premium fuel accordingly, while the X5M is comparatively painless to run for a short rental. None of that changes the recommendation below, but it’s worth factoring in if you’re deciding purely on cost.
Our call: the Ferrari Purosangue. It’s the only one of the three that actually sounds and drives like a proper Ferrari, and V12s like this are becoming rarer every year. Choose the Urus S if outright drama and a fifth seat matter more than engine character, or the X5M Competition if this is simply about a quick, comfortable, all-weather weekend without the exotic-car premium.
All three are available through the same fleet that supplies the Porsche 911s on Pure Adrenalin’s Porsche Europe Road Trip — a completely separate booking, worth considering on its own merits if a few days in Munich isn’t enough and you’d rather have a full week of driving with a private guide instead.
Ready to book one for your own Munich weekend? Get in touch and we’ll set it up.