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2018 Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder First Drive Review | Cheating the wind

NAPA, Calif. — A long, fast, right-hand sweeper appears a few hundred feet ahead, but I don't tap the brakes. Instead I decide to trust the aerodynamics. And when the Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder slices through corner after corner with zero drama, the smile that naturally occurs when driving something so potent gets incrementally more maniacal. From behind the wheel, the driver can't see what's happening with the front splitter and rear wing. All the action takes place underneath the wedge-shaped bodywork. Electric actuators open and close air pathways that either push the Performante Spyder into the ground for the best possible cornering performance, or cancel out that drag-inducing downforce so that the car can accelerate as quickly as possible and hit a higher maximum speed. I have good reason to put faith in Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva, which I'll henceforth and mercifully shorten to its initials ALA — a system we've already experienced on our first and second drives of the Performante Coupe. I'd been given the full rundown on the bits and pieces of forged composite that make it all work, the most impressive of which allow aero vectoring from the wing to apply downforce only to the rear tire that needs it most. But it wasn't until I was behind the wheel on a particularly twisty ribbon of asphalt outside of Napa, California, that I was able to put ALA to the test. I progressively took corners faster, building up speed and pushing myself harder into the grippy bolsters of the Alcantara seat. The Performante Spyder stayed as flat as the plains of Kansas, and never gave one hint of breaking traction from the front or the rear. Straight-line acceleration is just as impressive. Yes, at 3.1 seconds, the Spyder is .2 seconds slower to 62 miles per hour than the Performante Coupe. Unless you're racing for pink slips, that's imperceptible and meaningless in the real world. Keep the throttle pinned and you'll hit a top speed of 202 mph, which matches that of the Coupe. What those numbers don't tell you, though, is how it actually feels to lunge forward with all-wheel-drive traction from a dead stop and sense no slowdown in the rate of acceleration until you're too scared to keep your foot planted any longer. I suggest keeping your head pressed firmly against its rest before trying for yourself. The naturally aspirated V10 engine sitting directly behind the passenger compartment spins out 640 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque.

2020 Lamborghini Aventador S Review | One last go in the ring

A sign at the Miura Ranch in Andalusia, Spain, warns any careless human, “Ganado Bravo – Prohibito Entrar.” Brave Cattle – Do Not Enter. The cattle at issue are specifically bulls, and Ferruccio LamborghiniÂ’s visit to the ranch in the 1960s – Lamborghini himself was a Taurus – would provide the thematic source for the names of his cars. Legend says Murcielago, a Navarra fighting bull, was sired into Don Antonio MiuraÂ’s breeding line in 1879 after surviving 24 stabs from the matadorÂ’s espada – the audience had clamored for the matador to spare the bullÂ’s life. The bull christened Aventador got no such reprieve, killed by Matador Emilio Munoz during a bullfight in 1993 in Zaragoza. Aventador did, though, fight fiercely enough to earn the accolade Trofeo de la Pena La Madronera, awarded to the bravest bull by ZaragosaÂ’s only female bullfighting club, La Madronera. Then someone cut off one of AventadorÂ’s ears and gave it to Munoz as a trophy. The Lamborghini Aventador, over a run of nine years and going, has fought just as bravely as its namesake and deserves the same trophy. It also – as much as it pains me to write this – deserves to be put to rest. The looks of the 2020 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster donÂ’t disappoint. Despite the name changes since Marcelo GandiniÂ’s 1974 Countach, LamborghiniÂ’s flagship has largely been an acolyte of the Porsche 911 school of evolutionary design. Nevertheless, every one of the AventadorÂ’s angled, unsparing lines acts like an arrestor cable on passers-by. Long, low, wide in front, and swelling to a carrier-esque beam in the rear, the Aventador is the kind of ruthless transport weÂ’d expect from Cyberdyne Systems or the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – no trace of weakness in it, nor any compassion. Breathtaking instead of beautiful. The only respite from the malice of the test car was in its color, Blu Cephus Pearl. A vivacious neighbor, as soon as she saw the car, christened it Deja Blue. That took some edge off the menace. Almost everything in the cabin is tailored excellence. The look and feel of the stitched leather, the seats, the craftsmanship, all could have come from an Italian atelier – and essentially, for any whoÂ’ve seen the leather shop at SantÂ’Agata Bolognese, they did. The compact cabin provides room for 6-footers; the seats provide continent-crossing comfort.

Lamborghini debuting limited-edition hypercar soon?

Rumor, anonymous sources, and Internet probing point to Lamborghini preparing a new limited-edition hypercar in the vein of the Centenario, Veneno, and Sesto Elemento. At the Frankfurt Motor Show last year, the carmaker's head of R&D told Car Advice, "Soon we will present to our most important customers a new version of what we call a one-off." The Supercar Blog reports Lamborghini did just that a few weeks ago at a private event in Italy. An anonymous source said the vehicle is codenamed LB48H, and looks like the 2017 Terzo Millennio concept. Assuming all of this is true, whatever's coming won't be a genuine one-off. Remember, the Sant' Agata brand made 40 Centenarios, four Venenos, and 20 Sesto Elementos. The only true one-off for recent sale was the 2012 Aventador J. According to The Supercar Blog, Lamborghini will make 63 of this newest revelation. We checked the production runs for every Lamborghini, no previous model got exactly 63 units. But the company started production in 1963 with the 350 GTV. The same way the Centenario referenced the 100th anniversary of Feruccio Lamborghini's birth, the LB48H could celebrate the company's beginnings in the second millennium — a natural tie-in with the Terzo Millennio (Third Millennium) inspiration. The name, and an Instagram post, bolster suspicions. Lamborghini's already said the next-gen Aventador due in 2020 and Huracan due in 2022 will get naturally-aspirated engines with hybrid power. We also know alphanumeric Lamborghini vehicle names identify aspects of the car. In the hybrid Asterion LPI 910-4 concept from 2014, the LP stood for longintudinale posteriore, as with current production models, the I stood for the Italian word for hybrid, Ibrido, the 910 for the horsepower. With the LB48H, we take the the L we know, we'll take the H for Hybrid. So what do the B and 48 represent? On June 18, Miguel Costa, who appears to head Lamborghini's Lisbon, Portugal dealership, published an Instagram post that said, "We made it possible! Soon!" For hashtags, he wrote, #masterpiece, #lamborghini, #lamborghinilisboa, and #lb48h. The #masterpiece and #lb48h hashtags soon disappeared from the post. When Jalopnik asked Lamborghini about the situation, the automaker said, "We are not confirming this." The Italian automaker uses these specials to preview design and technology elements headed for the range; the Centenario introduced rear-wheel steering that made its way to the Aventador S, for instance.