2013 Super Trofeo Stradale, 1k Miles Mint Condition! Carbon, Lift And Options on 2040-cars

Auto blog

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 ...

The Huracan Performante is still a supercar steal, regardless of 'Ring time validity

When Lamborghini released video of its new Huracan Performante lapping the Nurburgring in a stunning 6:52, not everyone was convinced the record was honest. As a result, Lamborghini's director of research and development provided some data to Roadshow to shore up the lap time claim. He addressed the tire issue by telling Roadshow that the car used the optional Pirelli Trofeo Rs. And he noted that it was quicker than its more powerful brother, the Aventador SV, because it cornered and accelerated faster. He even provided VBox data of the lap. The thing is, none of this really matters in the end, particularly for the Huracan. Let us explain. For one thing, if you're going to question the Performante's time, you should question all of the times. All of these records are presented by the manufacturers, so there isn't a truly impartial party measuring the results and inspecting cars. Even with a company presenting plenty of data and explanations, it's hard to be 100 percent sure everything is on the level without an unbiased third party inspecting the cars before and after the lap, and keeping timing. But besides the issue of impartiality, the times themselves aren't really important. As interesting and fun as it is to compare lap times at the Nurburgring, they're really only relevant for rich owners and car companies to brag, and for less-rich fans to bench race. That's not a bad thing, but to look at the lap time of one single track doesn't really give a full picture of a car's performance. A car that's fast at the Nurburgring could be really slow on a tight course like Streets of Willow Springs. There's also the issue of who's driving the car. The manufacturers put their top drivers out on the 'Ring to set times. If you're not a factory test driver, you'll probably never go that fast even if you did get your car to the track. It's all a bit like the silly "blind" or two-wheeled car records. They don't actually provide much info on what the car is really like, or how you could drive it. Even if you're not on board with this explanation, and trust all the 'Ring records except this Lamborghini, we still have a reason why it doesn't matter. You see, even if you're convinced that there's no way the Huracan could best the Porsche 918 Spyder and the Aventador around the Nordschleife, it's still a screaming supercar bargain. The Porsche is a million-dollar car, and the Aventador, just the base model, is $125,000 more than the Huracan Performante.

Another Lamborghini Veneno for sale, this time for only $8m

There are some cars you expect to see coming up for sale often in the used car listings. Civics, RAV4s, F-150s... you know, the kind of car that they build by the thousand, build to sell, and build to last. More attention-grabbing for us, though, is when we see multiples of a rarer model coming up time and again in the same place. Like the Lamborghini Veneno, for example. The factory in Sant'Agata only made three of these coupes for public consumption, and each of them sold for about $4 million. So we were surprised when we saw one pop up on Mobile.de with a whopping $11 million price tag. But we were even more surprised to see another one for sale on the same site, just weeks later. Pictured with red details (instead of white like the last one), this example is listed as the first of the three made, with only 100 kilometers (62 miles) on the odometer. Its owner is asking ˆ7.1 million – equivalent to nearly $8 million at current exchange rates. That's about twice what Lamborghini charged in the first place, four times what it charged more recently for the new Centenario, and twenty times the price of the Aventador on which they're all based. But it's still a heck of a lot less than the $11 million asked for the last one. Of course, the seller can ask for however much he or she wants, but actually getting that price is quite another matter. Part of us gets the feeling that if someone were really that interested, the listings wouldn't still be up for weeks now. The other part is surprised some squillionaire somewhere in the world hasn't ponied up an even $20 million to take both home already. Related Video: