2016 Lamborghini Huracan LP580-2 First Drive Review
As art imitates life, so the favor is returned. Virtual Lamborghinis have featured in many video games over the years, and now the Italian company seems to have developed a new model specifically for those who grew up with that genre's least realistic games, the ones that let you drift your virtual supercar with pixel-perfect precision at ridiculous speeds.
That’s certainly what we take from the technical briefing that introduces us to the new rear-wheel-drive Huracán LP580-2, as well as from our drive at the Losail circuit in Qatar. Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s R&D boss, gave a presentation in which he mentioned power oversteer in practically every other sentence. He assured us that the new car has been designed to flatter the skills of even modestly talented drivers, his words delivered against a video backdrop of Huracáns drifting at such outlandish angles as to make us believe Ken Block has at least one Italian cousin.
Fewer Driven Wheels, More Excitement
While this new rear-drive Huracán is a cheaper entry into Lambo ownership, it's also being pitched as more involving to drive than the existing LP610-4, trading some performance for the excitement and adjustability that comes from having more power than grip. A rear-wheel-drive Huracán was always part of the plan, unlike the rear-wheel-drive Gallardo, which was pretty much a driveshaft-removal job. Shedding the LP610's electronically controlled clutch pack as well as its propeller shaft, front differential, and related hardware saves a relatively modest 73 pounds in weight, but it also delivers some definitive differentiation over the Audi R8 that shares most of the baby Lambo’s structure and powertrain.
As the name suggests, the LP580’s mid-mounted 5.2-liter V-10 has been slightly downtuned, now delivering 572 horsepower. Both the engine speed at which peak power arrives and the fuel cutoff have fallen by 250 rpm to 8000 rpm and 8500 rpm compared with the 602-hp LP610-4. When we speculated as to whether this modest reduction in output had been done to ensure the cheaper, lighter car was not quicker than its $39,100-dearer sister, nobody looked too outraged, although Reggiani says the engine has also been digitally retuned to have a flatter torque curve better suited to, you've guessed it, going sideways.
Performance losses are minimal. Figure on a zero-to-60-mph time 0.2 second behind the regular car, which we timed at 2.5 seconds. The quoted top speed of 199 mph is 3 mph off the 610’s terminal velocity, which is unlikely to be an issue to anyone but latter-day moonshine runners.
Track Time
We, however, didn’t get a chance to drive the LP580-2 on the road, only on the Losail circuit located at the edge of the desert near Doha. Having seen Qatar's roads on our way to the track, we can report this as no great loss, as the entire country seems to be a construction site, sand, or some combination of both. But it does mean that we traveled all the way to the Middle East for the grand total of 16 laps of the 3.4-mile track, best known for hosting a round of the MotoGP championship. But don't worry—we made ’em count.
No comments:
Post a Comment