By Miles Downard
When an email lands in your mailbox inviting you to a Lamborghini event it’s almost inevitable that your heart will skip a beat. The fact that this invite clashed with my first motorsport event of the season caused something of a biological dilemma as my heart skipped while my brain processed the reality.
Fortunately the chaps at Lamborghini South Africa are rather accommodating and could find me an alternate date with the new Huracán Evo.
It’s a car that I’m fairly familiar with now, having driven the Huracán itself around Kyalami for a day and then last year the Performante version in the Western Cape. So I was relishing the chance to be reunited with Lamborghini’s howling V10 and to unpack exactly what the Evo is all about.
Having sat through the business presentation on the evening before the big day, followed by some reflection time over a glass of red, I struggled to fully understand how the Evo really differs from the Performante. The headline numbers are all the same. A whopping great 470kW emanates like thunder from the same high revving naturally aspirated V10 motor. It has the same dual clutch gearbox, the same 0-100km/h sprint time of 2.9 seconds and racks up the same three digit number on a high speed run. The only apparent thing missing is the Performante’s large rear wing.
Morning broke and we were up early in an attempt to break out of Cape Town’s city borders before traffic became unbearable. While enjoying a quick cup of coffee in Lamborghini’s Century City showroom I had a chance to take a closer look at the Evo and started to pick out further differences over the Performante, mainly around the interior.
Some new materials, like a carbon fibre fabric, adorn a slightly revised layout inside the Huracán. The centre console now features an eight inch touch screen that replaces a number of control functions previously handled by buttons, knobs or toggles. It looks good in my opinion. Otherwise it is much the same as before with the same uniquely Italian idiosyncrasies, like window buttons that work back to front if you apply normal logic.
The slow trundle out of Century City is where the Evo really starts to show its colours. In my review of the Performante I said it was quite happy at slow speeds, in and around town. Well as I pulled away in (relative) quiet I realised the Evo makes the Performante seem loud and edgy all the time.
Bumps and ruts are handled even more admirably and at cruising or city speeds offers up little more than a burble inside the cabin, which over a long trip is a much more relaxing environment as a result. In fact the Evo will even turn off half its bank of cylinders in certain coasting situations for better fuel economy.
Don’t think the sting has been removed from the Huracán, though. Bump up the drive mode from Strada (street) to Sport or Corsa (track) and the wailing V10 awakens putting a shiver down your spine. The hairs on your skin stand to attention as every available sensory input the human body can muster is focussed sharply on the road ahead.
Stab the throttle and you’re off like a scalded cat until the first corner arrives. Hard on the carbon ceramic brakes and the dual clutch gearbox drops gears sharply, blipping the throttle in the process. Turn in is sharp with mega grip on offer from the Pirelli P Zero tyres. Apex successfully found its back on the loud pedal and the Evo’s all wheel drive system and 600Nm of torque hauls you out the other end. As the driver you become a very integral cog in this masterpiece of a machine, an experience that is difficult to put into mere words on a page. When you’re in that moment of sensory overload, feeling the car dance and roar at the whim of your inputs, it is truly magical.
Things calm down when we returned to a national highway, back in Strada mode enjoying the Evo’s sensibility, which allowed some time for reflection. Last time I wrote about a Huracán I described the Western Cape’s rural road network as a tribute to the Nurburgring’s 157 corners. This time around in the Evo I enjoyed the trip to and from our Green Hell as well as the blast around it.
