Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato Review | Better than the 911 Dakar?

Now this is the Lamborghini Huracan Storato. It looks like some kind of crazy YouTube or Instagram project but actually it's Lamborghini's official swan song not just to the Huracan but non-hybridized Lamborghinis generally. Probably easiest to think of it as a kind of Evo all-wheel drive Huracan that's been jacked up and given the Audi all-wheel drive treatment. That's basically what it is and in fact the name Storato translates as dirt road in Italian. They're going to make £1,499 of these cars, £232,000 each but they're all already sold out. So today we're pretty lucky to be driving at Chuck Waller Raceway, Palm Springs, California. We've got a sealed surface racetrack and also the dirt side of the track as well. We've got a rally stage cut into the desert landscape here so if you think modern supercar grip limits are too high just wait till you get a load of this. Making a Huracan work off-road isn't just a case of jacking it up in the air although that is part of it. The suspension is raised 44 millimeters and its wheel tracks widened by 30 millimeters at the front, 34 at the rear. The wheels are 19 inches and wrapped in Bridgestone Dueler tires that are a bespoke compound for Lamborghini. They're covered by carbon fiber wheel arches. You also get aluminium protective cladding and reinforced sills and rear diffuser. Weight rises to acclaimed 1,470 kilos dry, that's 48 kilos more than an Evo all-wheel drive. Inside you also get new Alcantara trim and a new set of digital graphics including a compass presumably to help you find your way back to civilization after a day drifting across the desert. Now what I really like with this car as well is we've got the 5.2 litre naturally aspirated V10. It's got 602 brake horsepower and 413 pound-foot of torque. Now that makes me think, or it did make me think, that it was basically the Evo rear-wheel drive engine but it's not. It's the STO engine, the top-spec engine and it's detuned a bit because it's got the roof snorkel on the top and that just affects the way it ingests air and makes its power. It's also an absolutely amazing engine for drifting on dirt as it happens because it's naturally aspirated. It's got a real reach, the rev range goes up to 8.6 I think it is there. So when you're spinning the tires on dirt it just sounds absolutely amazing. Absolutely bashing through these bumps here. Suspension's doing really well and wow it's just a proper off-road car that you can, like a rally car on a stage here. I've got my co-driver alongside me giving me some useful advice because I've never been here. He's doing very well and he's coached me through it but yeah what a thing. I just have to make sure I don't get too excited here because it's sliding around so much. Bit too fast there so I need to keep it going, get the steering straight. Just got away with that I think. A little flick here, almost into the cones, think I got away with that as well. Brake here. Wow what a thing it is, so much fun. We've also still got some stability control on so trying to be smooth while using the weight and the power to move the car around but I can't do too much otherwise it cuts in so I'm just trying to be in the window here to get it working properly. Get on the throttle quite early, you just have to try and make sure it doesn't understeer. Stopping. So out on the road now away from Chuckwalla Raceway driving through this beautiful landscape in the Joshua Tree National Park and just this landscape is absolutely incredible. It's just such a privilege to be able to drive this thing through here actually. So the feeling generally with this car is it's just got quite a mellow sort of feel on the road actually. This car is absolutely perfect for here but also I know it's kind of alien landscape for the UK but I can see how it would work really well. It feels kind of very settled in itself and it feels like if you transferred this to the UK you know with potholes and maybe you'd be worried about bashing a regular Lamborghini on kerbs. It just gives you a bit of extra peace of mind to be able to use it because it's just more user-friendly and a more usable day-to-day. The road's got loads of kind of long frequency bumps so lots of dips in and out that's really testing the primary ride of this suspension so it's got a really kind of compliant feel, rides really nicely on the road. The other thing that's interesting is the steering because I thought you know with these kind of off-road focus tires you'd get quite a lot of mush in the steering it just wouldn't turn in as sharply and you know of course it's not as sharp as something like a Huracan STO or Technica or something like that but it is still quite pinpoint accurate and as you kind of flick it left and right changes direction really nicely. You've got some body roll with it but it's nicely measured, nicely gathered up so it works really well up here actually. Put it into sport now and just have a feel. Very much a Lamborghini still. Quite a tight corner there and it soaked that up really nicely, really gathered up that body roll again. I think we can tell like on track that it does like to sort of yaw and roll and slide but it's not something that feels like it unravels here. It's still very, very together. And it'll be really nice in the UK as well on those kind of country roads where maybe if you meet someone coming the other way and you need to dip a wheel off onto the verge and things like that you just know that it'll soak that up and deal with it as well. So the more you kind of dig into this car and think about how people use cars and what is better for them you know a Nurburgring lap record time is all very well for selling cars but actually on the flip side this is probably better suited to how people use them. I love it I thought I was quite... Talking to the tech boss and I thought this engine because it's got the same out it will drive V10 602 brake horsepower 413 pound foot of torque it's more advanced more technically kind of you know the cylinder head has got a significant changes to it to get it to STO spec and actually the difference is in the roof scoop here the way it ingests air and feeds that into the combustion chamber that is the difference that de-tunes this engine It sounds brilliant though. I think there'll be loads of road noise from these tires as well with them being the sort of off-road tread that's really well contained rides nicely engines really tuneful but not over the top so as a long-distance car as well I think it works really well. It's like being in the movie Vanishing Point if you ever seen that out here you know you just see cars on the horizon it's kind of heat haze and then a truck or a car will appear almost rising out of the surface Big dip. No problem at all. I mean it's just so cool that you can drive on pretty gnarly roads and just not worry about scuffing the front splitter, not worry about bottoming. Now the nagging doubt here is that as much as I'm a kid in a sweet shop with everything that Lamborghini has laid on for us is that the Storato is a bit pointless. I mean it looks cool in that sort of Instagram way but who's gonna do what we've just done. But here's the thing how many people set a Nurburgring lap time in a Aventador SVJ and who actually goes off-road in an Urus? People just like what those cars represent and there's nothing wrong with that. In some ways the Storato is no different plus this car is more user friendly on the road for cruising about than other Huracans. You're not quite so worried about potholes or scuffing the nose on kerbs and you can guarantee that a handful of very wealthy people will use the Storato just like we've done. It's now four years since we saw this car and it still feels a slightly unorthodox way for the Huracan to go out. But it looks fantastic, it's probably better suited to regular use than other Huracans and if you do buy one and happen to have a rallycross circuit all to yourself then well it's absolutely sensational.