Unleashing Lamborghini’s Huracan STO

Electric and hybrid technology is set to take hold of the world’s wildest cars. This is a firebreathing farewell to the internal combustion engine.

Lamborghini’s Huracan STO has close links to racing machines.

Only Lamborghini could build this car.

Like a five-year-old wearing superhero pyjamas down the street, Lambo can get away with behaviour other brands are too self-conscious to attempt.

The Lamborghini Huracan STO is the brand’s road-going race car.

There’s swagger to the Lamborghini Huracan STO, with its exaggerated features shrink-wrapped in the clashing fluoro colours of a musclebound comic book hero.
It’s like Superman. Toned and purposeful, underpants worn proudly on the outside.

Sophisticated hybrid rivals from Ferrari and McLaren are silent on start-up, with an almost apologetic approach to their lofty standing in the motoring kingdom.

Lamborghini offers the model in an array of wild colour combinations.

Lamborghini is having none of that. Not yet.

This ten-cylinder engine with 470kW and 565Nm is a hybrid only in that its 5.2 litres need enormous quantities of both fuel and air to go bang.

It might be the loudest car I’ve encountered – visually and aurally. It’s not possible to hold a conversation within the cabin when the engine is working hard. 

The Huracan’s one-piece bonnet lifts away to reveal an enormous engine.

There is no carpet, no interior door padding, the seats are uncompromising carbon fibre buckets and its rear view mirror is almost completely blocked by an oversized shark fin and rear wing.

The front bumper and rear engine cover are single-piece carbon fibre items that cost as much as a family car. There’s storage space for a single crash helmet, or one small bag of groceries.

The front-opening single-piece ‘cofango’ bonnet is unique to the STO.

Aerodynamic appendages work like the feathers of an arrow to keep its flight true, joining enormous carbon ceramic brakes and tacky Bridgestones to maintain control. The regular Huracan’s all-wheel-drive has been deleted in the name of weight saving, variable-speed steering binned in favour of the predictability of a regular rack.

It’s lower, with stiff suspension required by aero delivering almost half a tonne of downforce at speed. Named after Lamborghini’s racing cars, the Super Trofeo Omologata is a road-going cousin to cars built for endurance events at Bathurst and Daytona.

Lamborghini’s Huracan STO is at home on track.

Lambo says the road car laps the latter within two and a half seconds of the GT3 racer – a sensational feat from a road-registered machine wearing treaded tyres. 

This is a track-honed car, so our test drive of a left-hand-drive example takes place on the Phillip Island Grand Prix circuit.

One technician cinches my racing harness into place while another wires a radio into my helmet. A third checks the coupe’s tyre pressures before another gives the all-clear for takeoff. 

The V10-powered STO could be Lamborghini’s last non-hybrid supercar.

It feels like the opening scene of Top Gun, where a busy ballet of aircraft carrier crews prepares fighter jets for launch.

I light the afterburners and go into the danger zone, leaving pit lane on a two-ship mission as a wingman in the slipstream of an experienced racer.

The Huracan STO drives exactly the way you hope a Lamborghini might – even though many don’t deliver on the promise of bedroom posters. It’s an assault on the senses, hammering your eardrums as the seat fizzes with the frantic pulse of the enormous engine.

The Lamborghini Huracan STO produces serious downforce.

The steering is weighty yet feelsome, the response from its carbon Brembo brakes is astonishing, and the aero tests your bravery – and neck muscles – in fast corners.

Unfiltered feedback through the controls gives you the confidence to search for its extraordinarily high limits. The dual-clutch gearbox snaps through ratios like a race car and the soaring engine’s immediate power delivery feels like an extension of your mind.

There are no rude shocks or surprises – except for an eye-watering price of $596,000 plus options and on-road costs. 

Lamborghini expects Huracan STO customers to exercise their cars on track.

That money will buy far faster cars – at least in a straight line, as a 3.0 second 0-100km/h time and 310km/h top speed aren’t that impressive now.

But this STO stirs the soul like few others.

It’s a raw and stimulating machine and not sensible in any way.

Unlike Audi, which put the V10-powered R8 to pasture with little fanfare, Lamborghini had the sense to give its last pure petrol-powered supercar a proper farewell.

Lamborghini shipped several examples of the STO to Australia as part of its farewell to non-hybrid or electric engines.

VERDICT

The Huracan STO is thrilling and unforgettable, a fitting farewell to Lamborghini’s petrol era.

LAMBORGHINI HURACAN STO

PRICE About $650,000 drive-away

ENGINE 5.2-litre V10, 470kW and 565Nm

WARRANTY/SERVICE 3-yr/u’ltd km, about $15,000 for 5 years

SAFETY 6 airbags, carbon brakes, racing harnesses, roll cage

THIRST 14L/100km

SPARE None

BOOT 38 litres