MIAMI, Florida – The Lamborghini Huracán is a model that we here at CAR know well. We were one of the very first titles to road test an example and we’ve driven all variants launched to date, barring the GT3 racer (something I hope to recify soon). Now we find ourselves on the East Coast of the US to experience the latest addition to the Huracán stable.
What is it?
Lamborghini has been on a bit of product offensive these last few years and it seems that the Italian firm isn’t taking its foot off the gas any time soon. Late last year Lamborghini launched a rear-wheel drive version of the Huracán, a derivative that we drove on its world launch.
Now, just a few months later, Lamborghini has extended the Huracán range to include a third model, the Spyder. As the name denotes this is the drop-top version of a car that was solely a coupé offering, until now.
Keeping it light
Where lopping the roof off a sports coupé is normally a recipe for compromised structural rigidity and additional weight in the form of torsion-fighting under-body bracing, Lamborghini’s engineers have utilised the coupé’s carbon-fibre/aluminium backbone, which has only fractionally affected the stiffness. Technical spokespersons at the launch claim that there is an 8 per cent difference in structural rigidity between the Spyder and the coupé.
As you can see from the images, Lamborghini has eschewed a retractable hard-top, such as that found on most of it rivals, in favour of a fabric folding roof. This was done to keep the mass and mechanical complexity of the roof down to a minimum. The electrically operated top can be raised or lowered on the move at speeds of up to 50 km/h and the whole process takes just 17 seconds. Overall, the mass gain over the coupé is said to be 110 kg.
Still as powerful
Under that engine cover resides the same naturally aspirated 5,2-litre V10 motor that produces 449 kW of power. It’s capable of propelling the 1 542 kg the Huracán Spyder from standstill to 100 km/h in 3,4 seconds and on to a top speed of 324 km/h flat out, with the roof up or down.
Low and slow
Miami may seem like a great place to launch an open-top car, and it is. The weather here is great even while the rest of the US is battered by a bitter winter. And the level of decadence and wealth is palpable. The roads, especially those around the swanky South Beach area, are chock-full of sports and supercars.
At least half of these cars, from Mustangs and Camaros to Porsches and Maseratis are open-top derivatives. In fact, hotel guests coincidentally pitched up in roofless versions of the Gallardo and Aventador Super Veloce.
The problem, however, is that the roads in and around the city are all pin-straight with speeds limits that rarely rise above 40 mph (64 km/h), so pottering about these environs using around 10 per cent of the near-450 kW on offer is somewhat frustrating.
Crawling on open roads
It’s a well-known fact that Miami is a party town, so the roads are relatively quiet before lunchtime on a Sunday while the locals recover from a big night out. So we prowled the streets of the inner and outer city without too much other traffic around but always at the speed limit.
At speeds below 70 km/h the Spyder feels very much like its fixed-roof counterpart. With the triple layer fabric roof in place you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two.
A neat party trick of the Spyder is the ability to lower the tiny rear window to hear the full vocal assault of the V10, in 1st and some of second gear… as was the case here. Going on the reactions of the locals we encountered during our foray through the city, they seemed to appreciate the Huracán’s aggressive looking, wedge-shaped bodywork and engine noise.
Verdict
In some ways using Miami as a launch venue for a 450 kW super sportscar seems like a bad idea and the fact that the driving route gave us no opportunity to explore any of this car’s dynamic talents was a complaint voiced by many of my counterparts at the launch. And I’ve got be honest, I felt a bit hard done by as well, especially having flown halfway across the world to drive just 100 km of city roads, when Homestead raceway is about an hour away.
But I guess Lamborghini knows its clientele pretty well as the firm sells just a few thousand cars a year and its CEO attends every opening of a new dealership. Open-top sportscars and Lamborghinis are bought by people who want to be seen and you can’t flaunt your new Huracán Spyder to the Jones’ while travelling at breakneck speeds.
To that end, it’s fair to say that the Huracán coupé is for hardcore enthusiasts, the LP580-2 is for more skilled drivers with a penchant for driving playfulness, and the Spyder…well that’s for people who want to be seen.
