KURT NIEBUHR: This might not look
like the type of driving environment
you'd conjure up if you knew you'd be driving a Lamborghini.
The roads, narrow.
The corners, various.
Some tightening, some opening, but a lot of them are blind.
And the surface, mostly clear with a chance
of rocks and sand.
But we did bring a Lamborghini here.
Meet the new Huracan Evo.
[ENGINE RACES]
Before we go any further, it's important to talk about how
we got to the Huracan Evo.
In 2014, Lamborghini introduced the Huracan
to replace the long-lived Gallardo, which
was around for about 10 years.
But in the time that the Huracan was out, Ferrari had the 458.
And McLaren had the 570S and the 650S, and even the 720.
And all those cars were starting to make the Lamborghini look
a little tame.
So Lamborghini kicked it up a little bit
with the Performante that added more horsepower
and a pretty trick aero.
And it turned out, was a more engaging drive.
But Lamborghini had to worry about other cars,
like the 911 GT3 and the GT2 RS.
Even the Mercedes Benz AMG GT R. All of those offer
similar speed and thrills without eating into too
much of your trust fund.
So here is the Huracan Evo.
This utilizes a 5.2 liter 10 cylinder engine
that revs out to 8,500 RPM, and it makes 640 horsepower.
And that horsepower is organic, all natural artisanal
horsepower.
No turbos, no electric assist.
All that power is routed through a 7 speed dual clutch
automatic transmission and is passed out
through all four wheels.
It utilizes four wheel steering and has
a mechanical limited slip in the back.
And it has magnetorheological shocks.
So is the Lamborghini Huracan just leathered up track car
for the automotive sadist?
That's what we're here to find out.
So two things I'm really excited about.
One, I'm in a Lamborghini.
That's cool.
You should always be excited when you're in a Lamborghini.
Two, it's really nice in here.
The ride is compliant.
There's not a lot of tire noise.
The exhaust noise is subdued.
So all of this lack of commotion is brought to you
by the strada drive mode, which is the normal mode.
And if you just want to run some errands in your Lamborghini,
this is the mode that you would probably use.
Just pop out to the supermarket, not alert the media,
it's great.
I can't believe this is a Lamborghini,
this is so comfortable and sane.
Of course, if you buy a Lamborghini,
you would probably love to put it in sport or corsa
and rip around and run your errands that way.
No shame in that.
The weight of the steering is really nice.
It's light.
It actually feels almost a little bit too light at first,
but you just kind of get used to it after a while,
and it just makes the car that much more effortless
to drive around, even at low to medium speeds.
I actually really like these seats too.
There are three choices of seats.
These are the regular seats.
There's a sport seat and there's a race seat.
I'm about six feet tall and I kind of
wish this seat went down about a half an inch more,
maybe up to an inch more.
But you could buy the sport seats and have that.
The race seats are carbon fiber, so if you
have a spine that's made out of titanium,
you might be able to get comfortable in those.
That would not be my pick.
There are a few other things that
make this Huracan so comfortable and easy to live
with Monday through Friday.
The AC cools the cabin, the heated seats
work really quickly.
The heater controls it.
There's just enough airflow.
I don't want anything else out of it.
Something else I like about this car
is this new 8.4 inch touchscreen.
You can control audio through there, pair your phone,
seek telemetry.
It works about as well as it should in a Lamborghini.
It's clear and easy to read.
The response times can be a bit sluggish every so often,
but the only real gripe I have is that the volume control is
a little bit hard to pull up.
You gotta actually look for it on the screen
and press a button, then wait for it to come up.
And then after you adjust the volume, it vanishes.
So there's no, there's no hard to knob or anything like that.
It's a minor quibble.
Another surprise about being inside a Huracan
is you can see outside of it fairly well.
I'm not going to say visibility is excellent,
but it is pretty good in a forward and sideways direction.
It's a comfortable car to drive on the freeway
when you're in traffic.
You can parallel park the car without freaking out.
Only behind you is it a little bit iffy.
Also, looking out of the driver's side mirror,
all I see is intake.
I don't care, it's a Lamborghini.
You're supposed to see intake.
To put the visibility in perspective,
it is better than you would find in a Camaro,
should you be cross shopping those two vehicles.
So when you switch from strada to sport,
you hear the exhaust gets a little bit louder,
throttle's a little bit more responsive.
And the suspension firms up.
The stability control is allowed to behave in weird ways
and let the car kind of slide around a little bit more,
and you feel a little bit more under-steer,
but then you feel over-steer.
And Lamborghini has set this up on purpose
so that sport makes the driver feel
like they're going pretty quickly and having a good time,
even though it's not the fastest way to drive the car.
So basically, it's a mode for people
to think they know how to drive, but don't really
know how to drive, even though they're fully aware of that.
[ENGINE RACES]
And now for something completely different, corsa mode.
[ENGINE RACES]
[LAUGHS]
Now it's driving like a Lamborghini.
You get more throttle response.
You get more noise.
And then you get more speed, a lot more speed.
Stability control quits trying to make you feel fast and just
helps you go fast.
And this car goes oh, Jesus, fast.
Oh, goodness.
So we took this car to a test track.
Hang on a second.
There, let's put that back in strata so you can hear me.
We took this car to our test track, and if you didn't know,
we actually have a test track.
We test over 200 vehicles a year.
And this car hauls ass.
[ENGINE RACES]
0 to 60 time, quarter mile times, totally bonkers.
Probably the fastest car we've ever tested,
if not the second fastest.
But I haven't looked at everything.
Braking, similarly impressive.
[SQUEALING TIRES]
Although probably limited by the tires.
These are Pirelli P Zero Corsas.
And they're the mid-range tire that Lamborghini
offers on this car.
If you want all the performance, you
would get the optional Trofeo tire.
I think you should.
I think if you've already bought a Lamborghini,
you should get all of the Lamborghini out
of the Lamborghini that you can get.
Buy the Trofeo tires.
Handling and skidpad, impressive, but not
just for the raw number.
How it drove around the skidpad blew me away.
The entry speed is just so much higher than I'm used to.
And it was positional with the throttle,
it was positional with the steering,
and you could feel the all-wheel drive system
kind of pushing and pulling power around.
But so subtly that you just wound up going faster.
All those systems are so transparent.
I've said it before, but I am amazed with modern engines.
But I'm also amazed with modern transmissions.
This is a seven speed dual clutch automatic
and its shifts are almost imperceptible when
you're driving in strada.
You could leave it in automatic mode, fully automatic mode,
and you would be hard pressed to know what car you were
in if you had your eyes closed.
The Huracan Evo also benefits from a fairly sophisticated
all-wheel drive system, just as much
as it benefits from four wheel steering.
Now that has its benefits in town
making U-turns or tight turns in parking lots
are a total breeze in this car, but when you're
on a twisty road, especially one with tight corners,
having four wheel steering almost effectively shrinks
your wheelbase.
It's like you're driving a car that's a foot shorter.
It helps the Huracan feel more nimble and lighter
than it really is.
[ENGINE RACES]
All right, so what makes this car so fast?
Well, other than those horses in the back, this car
is bristling with sensors, and they measure pitch and yaw,
roll, longitudinal lateral acceleration,
vertical acceleration.
And those sensors combined with this new ECU
really lead to kind of a predictive performance
algorithm.
So you can kind of tell what you want
based on where your steering angle is,
where your throttle pedal is, your brake pedal,
all that stuff.
It just knows.
And because it just knows, you go faster.
Science.
[ENGINE RACES]
Now Lamborghini has some very Italian names for these pieces
of software, very Italian.
Like super Italian.
My Italian is terrible.
And I am not going to pronounce them or even
attempt to, because I think I might make the pope cry.
So we've put them right down here on the bottom.
And you can practice them on your own.
[ENGINE RACES]
Now the modern super car owner is
right to want a little bit of practicality for their money.
Lamborghini has put a franc in the car.
You could take a bag about this size
and throw it in and go for a drive.
It's also 2020.
The modern super car owner is concerned about fuel economy.
No, they're not.
Nobody's concerned about fuel economy with this car,
and you shouldn't be either.
[ENGINE RACES]
The Huracan Evo is not just some leathered up track special.
It really is a livable supercar.
You can drive to work in it and then
you can come out here and just obliterate everything.
The way that I'm driving this Huracan now on this road
is something I would have never attempted in the Aventador.
This car is more nimble, more friendly, just as fast.
Oh. my God!
It boggles the mind how quickly you
can push this Lamborghini almost straight away.
It's something that the original Huracan just lacked.
They fixed it.
This car is really something else.
I have to admit, I expected the Huracan
to be kind of in that vein of Lambo-ness
of just big and powerful and you can't see out of it,
and it only wants to run flat out.
And if you can't run flat out while you're
smoking a cigarette with the top four buttons of your shirt
open, then you probably shouldn't
be in the Lamborghini.
I'm wrong.
This car is civilized and respectable.
It is a modern fast car.
Good lord!
[ENGINE RACES]
[LAUGHS]
I'm sold, that's it.
Oh, wait, I can't afford one.
Crap.
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