CENTRAL DESTIN, Calif. — lamborghini knows something about its buyers: They want to be able to show up and perform ludicrous acts. Usually, that means doors with scissor hinges and unobstructed performance on pavement. Sometimes, though, lambo made its boundary-pushing off-road performance – and not just because stability control failed spectacularly. The legendary LM002 is a V12-powered luxury pickup primarily intended for sheiks of the United Arab Emirates to ski up the dunes, and is the brand’s best-selling model. urine more likely to do silly things in rough places than a Starbucks drive-thru.
And now, plunging through a dirt road and entering Lambo’s temple of luxury all-terrain vehicles is the 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, a 601-horsepower, $273,000, limited edition. It is raised 44 mm or 1.73 inches for better ground clearance and suspension travel. The track is extended by 30 mm at the front and 34 mm at the rear, enough to require fender-mounted flares. Its ticking underside is armored with aluminum sliding panels. The bodywork is designed in a safari style with a nose-like steering light, a roof bar to support the gear box mount, and a snorkel for easier breathing when drawing lines in the sand. It looks like a supercar and like the means of escape for a couple of grave robbers, trying to sneak out of Giza before the cultural police, and whatever curse the thieves may have unlocked.
Just a few weeks before driving past the Sterrato — literally, because — in the Southern California desert, I got behind the wheel of my slightly cheaper and tasked replacement brother, the Huracán Tecnica, on the twisty Italian mountain roads. With more than 30hp, rear-wheel drive, rear-wheel steering, a tuned exhaust system and Bridgestone Potenza Race tires, driving is surprisingly quick and easy, even/special especially through technical turns and sharp turns.
Sterrato is a completely different bullfight, but particularly similar in its ability to improve my driving skills. It’s so simple to ride well through limited hairpins, arc scanners, and altitude conversion bikes – often used by mountain bikers – that it’s truly mind-blowing fever. I have controlled all the ways of truck and SUVs in the sand, but I’ve never had this experience with a “safari’d” performance car.
Sterrato is a revelation in this respect. “Rally” mode and torque vectoring all-wheel drive — combined with a tuned version of Huracanseven-speed dual-clutch transmission and electronically-locked rear differential — know exactly what to do, no matter the desert, again literallythrow at it.
“Imagine the wheels are not like ordinary wheels but more like the rudder of a boat,” my colleague and a Lamborghini factory racer, told me. “The harder you rotate, the more they push the sand and let the torque vector do the job finding its grip.”
At first, I didn’t believe him – I was hesitant on my first rounds. But once I allowed myself to give in to Sterrato’s intelligence, it rewarded me with utter delight. Rarely does the addition of more steering and more power work on the track, but using this formula in the dust, Sterrato knows exactly what to do in any situation where I try to get bogged down. Alternating cheerfully with a happy tail and nose, it enjoys finding a place to hold on and getting out on its own. I don’t really understand the physics, but driving the off-road Sterrato turned out to be one of those experiences where using a larger hammer would somehow yield more accurate results.
The 1.73-inch lift is meager, but it’s confident enough to get through trails, washboards, sand traps, and small mounds. Surprisingly, it even has better off-road ability than any other mid-engined Lamborghini I’ve driven since it’s more likely to hit pavement cuts and parking entrances. without fear of abrading the underside of the front clamp. That confidence alone is worth $30,000 more than a normal Huracan. If I could even buy one – all 1,499 seem destined.
Credit is due to the 235/40/19 (front) and 285/40/19 Dueler AT002 run-flat shoes, designed specifically by Bridgestone for Sterrato’s combined needs for high power, grip, and traction. loose and remote desert use. With sidewalls significantly wider than a typical Huracan, the car feels downright smooth on highways and crumbling asphalt that runs the length of Joshua Tree National Park. And while the aggressive step makes it a little louder (with help from the howling V10 engine), I find myself willing to make a trade-off. Or wondering if Lamborghini, or everyone, should outfit their exotic cars with smaller wheels and higher profile tyres.
Lamborghinis, like all true supercars, are for extroverts. Seen as point type. But Sterrato takes this elf to the next level. Every moment I drove it, it felt like a 50-pound bag of antelope meat was thrown into a lion’s den. If I had a desert dune in my backyard, or even needed to see more, I’d rather have a Sterrato than I’ve made. As it stands, it is an ideal coupe de grace for the Huracan line, a thrilling ending, in a car that, like the brand itself, feigns affection for a ridiculous erasure of boundaries.
