This is an old-fashioned, dangerous car — and a middle finger to the future

If you get a corner wrong you’ll be going through the pearly gates at 300km/h with your trousers on fire.

The Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica. If you get a corner wrong you’ll be going through the pearly gates at 300km/h with your trousers on fire.

In recent weeks people with annoying adenoids and tape measures have explained that the average width of the modern car is now 200cm, which means they are too wide to fit into a standard 180cm wide city street parking bay.

Naturally this demand for ever-larger cars is deemed to be stupid and all the fault of Israel and the Tories and bankers who want us in bigger and bigger Chelsea tractors so we can more effectively bully cyclists and hard-working members of the BLT+ community.

Well, that’s nonsense. The only reason cars are getting bigger is so there’s enough room inside to house all the airbags and side-impact protection bars and crumple zones and those funny little cables that pull the pedals away from your feet when you hit a tree. Safe spaces are what people demand these days, whether they are in a public lavatory or at work. And especially in a car. There’s an expectation that you should be able to drive your family saloon off the cliffs at Beachy Head and walk away with no injury that can’t be mended with a small bandage.

So yes. It’s a nuisance when you park your enormous Renault in a parking space and the only way out is through the sunroof. And it’s annoying when you find your new Range Rover barely fits through many width restrictions in London. But the reason for this is your ­safety. So you have to conclude that, all things considered, it’s a price worth paying.

Inside the Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica.

Or is it? I mean it is for your children, obviously. You want them to be in a motorised bouncy castle. But I wonder. Do I enjoy feeling safe? I’m not sure I do. I think that’s what made me fall in love with cars in the first place. ­Because they were a little bit dangerous.

I don’t think I’m alone. Today, all new cars come with “driver aids” that beep when you break the speed limit, tug at the wheel when you stray out of your lane or apply the brakes if sensors think you’re about to crash. And a recent survey found that 41 per cent of us turn these features off before setting out on a journey. They’re there to save our lives and we don’t want that.

If you are a proper petrolhead, you don’t want any sort of environmentally-minded propulsion system either. You don’t want a turbocharger or an electric motor or a system that harnesses energy every time you press the brake pedal, because all these things are interfering with the purity of the driving experience. It’s condom sex. Sensible and safe for sure, but when it comes to the environment, I’ll have a proper car and do my bit for the planet by turning the central heating down a bit.

And that brings me on to the Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica. A few years ago I sat next to a Lambo boss at a Sunday Times dinner and he told me that if his paymasters at the Volkswagen Group “ever force me to make an electric car, I will shoot myself”.

Well, sorry mate, you’d better oil your service revolver because Lambo will soon go down the electric route. What’s pictured here, then, is the last of the monsters. No turbo. No hybrid drive. No beeping onboard nanny. And a very real sense that if you get a corner wrong you’ll be going through the pearly gates at 300km/h with your trousers on fire.

Let’s begin with the engine. It’s a V10, and I think we are in agreement that this is the best possible configuration, partly because of its ­inherent balance and reduced ­reciprocating forces, but mainly because of the soundtrack. Formula One never sounded better than it did when the cars had V10s and the Lexus LFA is the best car I’ve ever driven, principally because of the sound its V10 engine made. And then there’s the BMW M5; there have been many brilliant incarnations of this car over the years but peak M5 arrived, I think, when it had a V10.

The Lambo uses a 5.2-litre version that sends all of its power to the rear wheels. Most Hurácans have four-wheel drive. But this one doesn’t. This one is designed so you can do big, dangerous skids.

So you’re probably thinking it’s going to be as well-­appointed ­inside as a chest freezer. I did too. But it isn’t. There’s hand-stitched leather and electric seats and a dash-mounted iPad thing that controls all the stuff you’re used to these days. It’s actually quite ­intuitive too. And best of all, you can actually see what’s coming at oblique junctions. That’s pretty much a first for a mid-engined ­supercar.

So, it’s civilised then? Not really. It starts with the roar of a sci-fi space alien, settles down to a gentle rumble and then starts roaring again every time you go near the throttle. It’s a magnificent sound and when you put it in Sport or Track mode it gets even better.

The only problem is that when you do that you put the suspension in an “uncomfortable” setting. This is because the Hurácan was conceived at a time when it was not possible to make the engine sporty and the suspension not.

I soon settled for Street mode and fell in love. Because the Hurácan is old and therefore unburdened with all the legislative nonsense that burdens other cars, it feels dainty. And light. And carefree. The back may be singing something volcanic but the front feels as darty as a dragonfly. Couple this exquisite lightness of being to four-wheel steering and you end up with a car that, at first, is quite hard to place on the road. The steering wheel is like the joystick on a Hughes 500 helicopter. You don’t move it to change direction. You just think about moving it.

Eventually you get the hang of it and the result is bliss. I was ­coming back from a meeting on a road I used to use when I was on Performance Car magazine. It’s a road still used today by Harry Metcalfe for his YouTube car reviews and I noticed I was being followed closely by some kind of hatchback. I wasn’t really pushing it, but I noticed that in the bends, which felt comfortable for the Huracán, the hatchback looked like that boat George Clooney had in The Perfect Storm. All over the place. Hope he had a lot of airbags in there.

Drawbacks. Well, much is made of the styling and technical differences between this and a normal Huracán. But they aren’t that obvious. Also, it’s expensive, thirsty and if you’re big (fat) it’s a bugger to get out of. But that’s as it should be with cars of this type.

So there we are. A brilliant car. A poster car. An old-fashioned, dangerous car. And, best of all, a gigantic middle finger to the future.