We’re about three weeks away until the calendar flips over to another year. And with 2017 just around the corner, it’s not at all surprising to see automakers begin their preparations ahead of the year’s first major auto event, the North American International Auto Show. We know very little at this point on what to expect in Detroit, but one automaker has just given us a taste of one thing that we can look forward to as we count down the days to the event.

This teaser video, provided to us by Lamborghini, is promising big things. Sure, it didn’t explicitly say that the teaser leads up to Detroit, but we can assume as much given the timetable we have at this point in the calendar. Apparently, the Italian automaker has some big plans on the horizon, and these plans are likely tied up to what could be the next iteration of its range-topping V-12 engine.

Is it going to be a new supercar concept featuring the new V-12 engine? Is it going to be just the engine and nothing else? Is it going to be the long-awaited mid-cycle facelift of the Lamborghini Aventador, of which we’ve seen spy shots of the car in various settings in recent months? Heck, is it a mystery car with a repositioned V-12 engine?

That’s a lot of questions to ask, but very few answers to come by. What’s clear at this point though is that a new and possibly more modern version of a V-12 engine is going to be involved since that’s pretty much all the teaser video alluded to.

Take your pick on the possible scenarios that Lamborghini’s teasing us with, but given that kind of treatment on the teaser video, we can at least expect to see something big coming out of Sant’Agata Bolognese.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.

The guessing game now begins

The teaser video was clear about what it’s promoting: that rip-roaring V-12 engine that’s been at the heart of Lamborghini since the company started in 1963. It figures that with so many automakers adopting smaller turbocharged mills, promoting and advancing the dying breed that is the V-12 is Lamborghini’s way of telling the rest of the industry that naturally aspirated mammoth engines still have a place in today’s world.

And so, here we are, trying to unlock the mystery behind this teaser video. For its part, Lamborghini gave us a nice history lesson the evolution of its V-12 engines, beginning with the “longitudinal anteriore” front-mounted layout of the 350GT to the "transversal posteriore" mid-mounted layout of the Miura to the modern "longitudinal posteriore" V-12 engines that cars like the Aventador use today.

The teaser ends with the Aventador performing a power slide in the desert as the worlds “What will be next?” flashes on the screen. That is the golden question, isn’t it?

“What will be next?”

I can’t tell you at this point what I think is going to be next, but I do know that the reveal is going to happen sooner than later. Let’s all hope then that Lamborghini make a stop at Detroit for the 2017 NAIAS and brings its surprise with it. That’s not too much to ask, is it Lamborghini?