Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato

FIRST DRIVE Off-road tweaks give capable 4WD supercar additional benefits on tarmac, too 

- James Taylor

THE Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato (meaning 'dirt road' in Italian) is limited to 1,499 cars globally, and marks the final evolution of the Huracán, the marque's most successful supercar in terms of sales.

Although a final 60th anniversary car will follow, based on the regular, road-focused Huracán series, this gravel-ready special is one of the last derivatives on the car's decade-old platform. It's also the swansong for the Huracán's fabulous V10 engine.

The Sterrato was born from off-road testing while developing the Urus SUV in 2017. The engineering and design team was inspired to create a prototype off-road version of the Huracán, partly for R&D and partly for fun. They had so much fun with it that hopes for a production version quickly gathered momentum. When CEO Stephan Winkelmann returned to the firm in 2020, he gave the green light to a limited run of customer cars.

Head of design Mitja Borkert and his team created the plastic cladding around the sills and wheelarches (covering wheels pushed out wider on both axles, and shod in special all-terrain tyres developed by Bridgestone).

There's more suspension travel and the set-up is softer than the standard Huracán's. It still has adaptive dampers with a Touring mode, and a firmer setting that sharpens the handling on a winding road or tarmac track. The rally-style spotlights on the nose are optional, as are the roof crossbars (which are worth speccing, given that the Sterrato has the same tiny boot and lack of interior storage as a regular Huracán). The snorkel air intake is standard, because testing revealed that the engine needed additional airflow while sliding sideways on gravel.

The Sterrato is priced at £232,820 in the UK, a jump of approximately £30,000 over a Huracán Tecnica. All Sterratos are now sold.