Britain’s special forces earn their spurs,
it’s said, by being abandoned on some blasted Scottish heath armed only with
their underpants. If they manage to fashion a weatherproof garment out of
thistle and subsist on the right berries for three days, they’re in.
Granted, arriving by Ryanair isn’t the
ideal jumping-off point and we’re fully dressed, but still, we have a suitably
punchy mission statement: deliver the new Lamborghini Huracán to Europe’s
highest paved road, shoot and return, all within the space of 20 hours. Veleta,
our target, lies in the middle of the squiggliest of contour lines on the map,
deep in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Pico del Veleta is just shy of 11,150
feet, although the access road stops some way short of that. That’s high. Our
route will speed us on the motorway through some spectacular sun-bleached
vistas, before turning seriously twisty and oxygen-thin. No one outside
Sant’Agata will have driven the car further or harder.
The
Huracán is the successor to the Lamborghini Gallardo
What is Huracán? A Mayan god of wind, storm
and fire, but also a late 19th-century fighting bull from Alicante. For
Lamborghini, it’s more about the wind of change than an aggrieved Central
American deity or sanguinary sport – the Huracán has an all-new chassis, a new
electronic nervous system, a new 7spd dual-clutch ’box and a heavily revised
version of its rather excellent 5.2-litre V10. Why so important? Because this
car fills the gaping void left by the Gallardo, Lambo’s 14,000-plus bestseller
this past decade and principal profit centre.
Under cover of morning darkness, the
Huracán looks stunning. More considered than we might have expected, after the
progressively more outré Reventón, Aventador, Sesto Elemento, Veneno and
Egoista, but the snarky online sniping that greeted it is still way off-beam.
Trust me: in the flesh, the Huracán sizzles in all the right places. Our car’s
violent green colour, Verde Mantis, intensifies the surface nuances a more
Germanic shade would underplay, and the way the son-of-Aventador front end
mutates into a sharper line by the time your eye lands on the rear air intake
is genius. My personal highlight is the reverse rake and chamfered edge on the
integrated rear spoiler. Hats off, then, to Lamborghini’s design director,
Filippo Perini, the only car designer I know who references post-modern pop
barmpot Grace Jones while deconstructing his visual philosophy.
A
host of modern equipment is offered inside, including heated seats
The Huracán’s doors are disappointingly
normal, but configuring the clever new ‘virtual cockpit’ TFT instrument display
in the dark at 6am on a Sunday morning makes up for it. Rather than a central
screen, everything lives on the main display behind the steering wheel, itself
now festooned with buttons. You can flick between a huge rev-counter, your
preferred music, the satnav, or a mix and match. (The same system lands
imminently in the next-gen Audi TT, but gets Lambo-specific graphics here.)
A central bridge houses a row of rocker
switches and auxiliary gauges, air-con, MMI controller and audio. Beneath that,
under a militaristic red flip-up cover, sits the start button. There’s no
gearlever; reverse is engaged by a button cresting an eye-catching anodised
protrusion, with P and M below it, and an electronic parking brake behind. It’s
theatrical, dramatic, laden with fighter jet-inspired functionality. If only it
could serve up a double espresso.
The
Huracán's bucket seats are highly supportive
It doesn’t take long on the move to confirm
that the Huracán is reining in Lambo’s bad-boy shtick. A 603bhp V10 is one way
to fill the caffeine hole, but until I can shake off my fuzzy head, I’m content
to let the Huracán contain itself. That it can do so with startling
effectiveness determines how well you’re likely to get on with this car as a
whole.
What do you notice? The ride is incredibly
composed, isolating bumps and thumps and staving off nasty surface
irregularities, even on 20in wheels. The narrow daylight openings (or windows,
if you prefer) mean that the view out is fine. At a motorway lick, the
soundtrack is an oddly anodyne mix of valve train and chain drive whirr, a
white noise that’s redolent of a huge washing machine. It sounds busy not
ballsy.
A
digital instrument cluster features inside the Huracán
More mental notes. What, exactly, is
Lamborghini hoping to achieve with this car? There were smallish Lambos long
before the Gallardo revolutionised the brand’s appeal and scope – the Urraco
and Jalpa – but the scary supercar game is up. It’s all about user-friendliness
and accessibility these days. The Ferrari 458 Italia and McLaren 650S are
conceptually the closest rivals: the former, one of Ferrari’s greatest-ever
achievements; the latter, a substantial move in the right direction after some
fumbling. Porsche’s 911 Turbo S lays waste to everything, and the next Audi R8
– which will use the same architecture as the Huracán – is lurking in the
wings. Which way would you go?
