New Lamborghini Huracan Evo has a beautiful little body and a surprisingly big brain
I’M tiring of seeing lottery winners on TV – goofy grins obscured by massive novelty cheques – claiming “it won’t change me.”
Money would change me. Change me good and proper.
I don’t mean to have a dig, but take the couple who scooped £115million on New Year’s Day. Apparently they celebrated with a cup of tea.
Where’s the top-shelf bubbly? Hillside villa in Ibiza? Stable of racehorses?
I’m sure I’m the one with the problem and they’re bigger people than I am but if I ever win that kind of money I’m going to spend it with all the self control of a six-year-old at Disneyland.
And the only list I’ll be making is a list of which cars I’m going to buy. As of this week, a new one has taken the top spot on that fantasy roster — the Lamborghini Huracan Evo. This is the first update of the Huracan since its arrival in 2014 (if you don’t count the roofless Spyder and special edition Performante, and I don’t).
But where many brands would belch out a facelift and extend a hand for money, this is an entirely new, mouth-watering prospect.
A few things carry. It looks unmistakably like Lamborghini’s small sports car — all aero and angles — and it’s still powered by a naturally aspirated V10 engine.
But even this is new for the “entry” Lambo.
It now packs the same wallop as the £215K Performante, with power hiked to an embolism-triggering 631bhp.
Unusually for a supercar though, the power isn’t the most important thing to discuss.
It’s the Evo’s brain. Lambo calls it the Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata — we’ll just name it LDVI because I don’t have a degree in modern languages and that took me three minutes to type.
This thing makes Stephen Hawking look like he was “a bit on the dim side”.
Sending orders to a host of technology across the car, the LDVI makes a decision every 20 milliseconds.
Under its control comes a torque vectoring system — tempering power between all four wheels — traction control, active suspension and a rear-wheel steer system. It’s so advanced it can even predict the driver’s next move.
It learns from your driving style and optimises everything a split second before you commit.
Steering, torque and suspension load are — in theory — perfect before you attack the corner.
In a way this is my only criticism of the car — it helps too much.
During the laps I did on the Bahrain International Circuit it made me feel like a track god, but the line between where my talent ran out and the computer helped me at the apex was blurred.
It does create a meaningful variation in drive modes though.
In Sport the computer lets the back end slide about under hard lock and acceleration, while Corsa mode delivers razor-sharp handling. Sport for fun, Corsa for lap times.
The Huracan Performante was Jeremy Clarkson’s Car Of The Year at the Sun Motors Awards last year.
The Evo is better, boasts Lambo. It reckons the Evo is three seconds faster around its test circuit than the Performante which, if true, is significant.
I can believe it. Downforce is seven times higher than the outgoing Huracan thanks to a more exaggerated rear spoiler and new front diffuser.
And that punchier engine has shaved the 0-62mph time to 2.9 seconds.
I’ve never felt more alive than when driving this car.
Every input makes it fizz and bristle, every sense in the body heightened to the extreme. It’s playful, while at the same time ferocious. I’m still making sense of it now.
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The noise alone is worth paying £200K for.
The fact the car works as hard as it does to keep you shiny side up is probably vital. The only folk with enough money to buy one are 60-year-old CEOs whose eyesight probably isn’t what it once was, or infant-like professional footballers.
Oh, and lottery winners . . . if they’d only do the decent thing and let money corrupt them.
KEY FACTS
LAMBORGHINI HURACAN EVO
Price: £206,000
Engine: 5.2 litre V10 petrol
Economy: TBC
0-62mph: 2.9s
Length: 4.5 metres
CO2: TBC