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Lamborghini expands Huracan range with rear-wheel-drive convertible

The Lamborghini Huracan LP580-2 Spyder completes the game of fill-in-the-blanks in the Italian's automaker's V10-powered lineup. With the brand already having proved its customary formula of "Remove the roof, retain the awesome," we expect this to be another uncommonly pleasing convertible from Sant' Agata Bolognese. The three-layer roof and mechanism migrate from the all-wheel-drive spyder. Taking 17 seconds to lower, the bodywork springs various tricks to maintain the appropriate cabin atmosphere. Two fins emerge from the B-pillar to preserve the car's profile, with narrow ducts in those fins managing wind flow through the engine compartment. Keeping the rear window up also calms the cockpit, lowering it invites the breeze and the wail of the engine. Additional zephyr management measures come in the form of removable mesh windguards that can be fitted next to the headrests. View 26 Photos Minor adjustments to the front and rear are the only visible differences between the RWD coupe and Spyder. The 5.2-liter V10 rocks the same 572 horsepower and 398 pound-feet of torque and top speed holds steady at 198 mph, but the 0-60 mile-per-hour time creeps up by two tenths of a second to 3.6 seconds. Dry weight clocks in at 3,320 pounds, a 258-pound jump over the coupe, but 330 pounds less than the all-wheel-drive Huracan Spyder we sampled - and loved - earlier this year. Lamborghini says the Huracan rear-wheel-drive spyder price will slot in between the MSRP of the two- and four-wheel drive coupes when the car goes on sale in January 2017. Before then, you can view it for the much more reasonable price of "free" when it's unveiled at the LA Auto Show. Related Video: Image Credit: Live photos copyright 2016 Drew Phillips / Autoblog LA Auto Show Lamborghini Convertible Luxury Performance Supercars Videos Original Video

Lamborghini Huracan Performante's active aero is the secret to its speed

The most revolutionary real technology at this year's Geneva Motor Show didn't look like it on the show stand. If you squint at the Lamborghini Huracan Performante, it merely looks like a Huracan with a big wing. Up close, you can see the fractal texture of the forged-composite aerodynamic add-ons, but that still doesn't tell you why this car is so special. Lamborghini calls it Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva (ALA), or active aerodynamics. This is one of the biggest keys to the Performante's claimed production-car record lap time at the Nurburgring Nordschleife of 6 minutes, 52.01 seconds. The Huracan Performante's number is not without controversy, but I personally care very little about the obsessive phallic-measuring contests that are 'Ring lap times. What's fascinating about the Performante is that, if the lap time is even close to legitimate, it shows that ALA is a major step forward in automotive performance. More than just lap times, the Huracan Performante is an example of why Lamborghini remains special in a world of democratized performance. We sat down to discuss this with Lamborghini's Research and Development Director, Maurizio Reggiani. And one last note on the lap time: Reggiani says with the same temperature and exclusive access to a dry track, "that in this average of speed we can repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat." In previous conversations, Reggiani said that the key difference in performance would come not from horsepower, but weight reduction. For Lamborghini, that means plenty of carbon fiber. But the newest Huracan is not a Superleggera, the old title for the hardcore variant. "Superleggera is too much an objective, a description. Performante is really the DNA of the car. In Italian, Performante means really the best performance," he said. Reggiani continues, "Nothing happened by chance. It's really a building-block approach where you say this can give this contribution, this can give that. Where can you improve something and what is needed to improve something?" That brought them to the active aerodynamics solution, which channels air to stall the front or rear aero elements of the car to change the downforce and drag. Reggiani says, "This can be achieved only with a system that is really light, [has] fast responsiveness. Based on this ...

Lamborghini reveals Asterion LPI 910-4 hybrid hypercar concept

There are automakers that roll out concept cars regularly as a matter of course, and there are those that rarely do. Lamborghini falls squarely in the latter category, which makes the vehicle you see here - revealed just a day before the Paris Motor Show - such a rare treat.
It's called the Lamborghini Asterion LPI 910-4, and if you're familiar with Sant'Agata nomenclature, you're probably already picking apart its specs based on those letters and numbers: LP for longitudinal posterior, telling you this is, like all other contemporary Raging Bulls, a mid-engined supercar. 910 tells you how much metric horsepower it packs. The 4 tells you it's all-wheel drive. But along with the name Asterion, borrowed from a mythical minotaur (a hybrid man-bull, for those unschooled in Greek mythology), it's the letter I - standing for "Ibrido" - which speaks of the novelty of this concept.
That's right, you're looking at the first gasoline-electric hybrid Lamborghini. A plug-in hybrid, in fact, that can travel 31 miles on electricity alone. The powertrain combines the 5.2-liter V10 and seven-speed DSG from the Huracán (good for 610 metric horsepower) to a trio of electric motors (good for another 300) to bring total output up to a claimed 910 - equivalent to 897 hp by our standards - assuming all four motors are running at peak output at the same time. That makes it the most powerful Lamborghini we've ever seen, and puts it in league with the McLaren P1 and LaFerrari. The result is a 0-62 time quoted at three seconds flat and a top speed of 199 miles per hour, or up to 78 mph in pure electric mode.