Logan and I are absolutely cooking. This stretch of road is only a few miles long and not a place designed for supercars. (The local authorities and residents wouldn’t approve of the run if any of either were around to see it.) But the back road is straight out of central casting for driving the Frankenstein’d supercar-meets-rally-car Lamborghini Huraćan Sterrato.
The road is tightly coiled and draped over unending undulating hills, with a badly cracked surface and buckles in the paving – all rugged enough that the front lip of a McLaren or “standard” Huracan would be scraped to hell in a few minutes. In a car more firmly sprung, or closer to the ground, you’d bottom out with an expensive, expletive-laden SQUANTCH of carbon on asphalt.
But in the Sterrato it’s perfect. No, it’s better than perfect, it’s hilarious.
One dirty little secret about supercars is that they’re not always that much fun. Fast, yes. Quick around a track, absolutely. Impressive to look at and tentatively push to a place approximating half of their astronomical limits, unquestioningly. But a lot of times it’s more fun to fuck around in a Miata.
These days, cars with huge power and matching price tags have tires, brakes, suspension, and chassis to match their face-melting power outputs. They are typically very easy to drive very quickly, at least within the boundaries of well-maintained paved roads. The overall competence can frustrate the desire to be scared, at least a little, by this stunning alien object.
As we press harder along this roller coaster road, the Sterrato is emphatically not sanitized. There’s so much softness and travel in the suspension, combined with the extra ground clearance, that the car gracefully dips without scraping at the bottom between two little hills, while palpably floating heavenward when I accelerate hard to the top of a rise. That same softness is enticing on corner entry and exit, where the car leans but doesn’t slip (the tires are still massive), like an MX-5 cup car on a six-inch lift kit. Rolling, floating, flying, all while a V10 screams and two grown dudes laugh their asses off.
Logan’s not only the tour guide and photographer on this project, he’s the perfect kind of passenger. He’s driven the tits off a lot of personal cars, or friend-owned and friend-loaned cars. He doesn’t get nervous or car sick and he rarely even feels the need to brace himself with his hands, as both are typically engaged in the production of great photos. When we reach the end of the road and suggest flipping around for a second run, his response is an enthusiastic “hell yeah.” Same again on the third run, and the fourth, etc.
The perfect superish car is the Porsche 911 – has been for years now. Fast, communicative, surprisingly practical, and still special, Porsche’s icon can be demurely driven 365 days a year with pleasure and confidence. Even if Lamborghini intended the Sterrato for serial production instead of as a limited edition, it would fall well short of any 911 as a daily driver.
And yet I suspect that this Huracan would be a stirring, year-round companion for idiots like Logan or me, living in four-season states and nowhere near a rally stage. The unfiltered joy of this machine seems to be made only bigger and brighter in bad weather and on shit roads; a complex and rewarding drive that challenges the driver in the best possible way.
Best Lamborghini ever? Probably not. Most fun? That’s an argument at least. And for one fall afternoon – for a few hours, a few sliding corners, and a few thousand pictures – there isn’t a car in the world I’d rather be driving hard. Not even a Miata; not even a 911.
To many readers, the Huracan Sterrato seems a silly exercise: destined to be garaged or showcased by owners who look at the limited Lambo as more a commodity than a car. I hope that’s not the case because it’s a hell of a ride, and a riot of laughs (for Logan and me, at least).
Photography: Logan Zillmer
