A Lamborghini is not a car that hides its light under a bushel but, even so, few things scream “Look at me!” with the intense volume of the new Huracán STO. Driving this round the M25 or 101 is an act of hedonistic extroversion on a par with Bianca Jagger riding that white horse across Studio 54’s dance floor. As if it didn’t look mad enough, GQ’s test car was festooned with lairy graphics.
To some, Lamborghini will forever be the most outré carmaker, trapped in the swirling nexus between disco king Giorgio Moroder’s moustache and that feckless idiot played by Leo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street. Wrong. These are now sublimely engineered and largely bulletproof supercars, prepared to take the driver places most others don’t.
And the £268,000 STO is a direct consequence of Lamborghini’s competition pedigree. Racing, as we all know, is good for the breed, but it’s also good for business. The company’s Super Trofeo single-make series started in 2009 and quickly took off across three continents. Then things got hotter still. Between 2016 and 2019, the company’s Squadra Corse GT3 cars won 30 championships, scored 85 race wins and finished on the podium 243 times. Now the technology and technique that’s helped propel Lamborghini’s racing adventures has been transferred to the new Huracán Evo STO, a track-oriented road car and arguably the most extreme the company has ever made.
Much of the STO story concerns our old friend aerodynamics. Should you compare its “pressure map” with its racing siblings and it’s clear that the profile is very similar. Take the new front splitter, for example. The curved radius in the central part of its structure ensures that the airflow in that area attaches itself cleanly as it flows towards the intakes and the deflectors on the front (and rear) underbody. Then there are the dual-purpose ducts on the front bonnet, which increase the flow of cooling air into the front radiator, while also increasing the amount of downforce generated over the front axle.
The front wheel arches have also been widened for maximum visual effect, but, more importantly, the slats or louvres decrease the high pressure and turbulent air that builds up in this area at speed. This enhances downforce over the front axle, but also improves the flow to the underbody. Such is the level of technical detail that the louvres are differently shaped and positioned at the front and rear: there’s a more slender curve to the front one to assist the air flow, a more pronounced angle on the rear to promote a better exit from the wheel arch and onwards past the body.
Check out that shark fin: this is a device that appeared on Formula One cars a few years ago and is still used in the LMP1 and 2 categories in world endurance racing. It’s primarily about managing the downforce that’s generated during cornering. In the entry phase, the fin builds pressure along its outside edge, which maximises the inward pressures towards the apex of the corner. This helps the STO to turn more efficiently, but also improves its stability mid-corner. It helps to combat “yaw” – when the car becomes unstable and starts to oversteer – and can also improve the effectiveness of the rear wing.
Carbon fibre features prominently in the structure of the STO, but never more so than on the car’s front section, known internally as the “cofango” (this combines the Italian for “hood”, cofano, with the word for “fender”, which is parafango). It’s a single piece made entirely of carbon fibre and draws on the 1960s Miura and the 2000s pure carbon-fibre concept car the Sesto Elemento for inspiration. The endgame here is to create a car of almost unfathomable grip, balance and poise, especially on the fastest corners of the world’s most demanding circuits. This way, even nonprofessional drivers get to sample the delirious effects of downforce.
Although, perhaps not on a normal road. No matter how many fast, impractical cars you’ve driven, nothing focuses the mind like a Lamborghini. They’re vastly easier to drive than they used to be, but still not for the faint-hearted. You sit low, you can see virtually nothing in the rear-view mirror or over your shoulder – it’s all engine in there – and the stubby front end drops aways immediately out of sight. The seat is unyielding. Lamborghini hides the engine start button under a little flap that flirts with fighter jet iconography: push that and the 5.2-litre V10 erupts into life. The power output is 631bhp, unaltered from other Huracáns, which is actually a good thing because only a fool or the preternaturally insecure would deem that insufficient. But the exhaust has been remapped, the throttle pedal is sharper and more responsive and there’s a faster, more direct steering ratio. This is also a pure combustion engine, with no turbocharging, never mind hybridisation. Fuel and air get to collaborate with fantastically explosive results.
Previous Huracáns were criticised for being a bit aloof, but the STO is right in your face and fully focused on the job at hand. Boy, is this thing busy on a bumpy back road, although it’s not uncomfortable. There are three driving modes: STO for everyday use; Trofeo for maximum attack, with lateral and longitudinal grip at their peak; and Pioggia for maximum performance when the grip levels are suboptimal (in the wet, for example). Torque vectoring and rear-wheel steering managed by the LDVI – Lamborghini’s Dynamic Vehicle Integration software – are more keenly tuned than ever. The result is one of those cars that hooks itself into the driver’s central nervous system, carving into corners, cleaving to the apex and exiting exactly as your hands and brain expect it to. There’s zero understeer – when the nose pushes wide – and it’ll only slide at the rear if you’ve switched off the traction control and go looking for those sort of kicks. Best enjoyed on the track, we’d suggest, although this is a beautifully balanced car despite its fearsome appearance.
Lamborghini, like everyone else, is now heading down the path towards electrification. As a maker of furiously charismatic cars, how they meet that challenge will be fascinating to observe. But this is one hell of a last hurrah…
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