2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato First Drive: The Perfect Supercar?

Perhaps nothing screws with your mind more than whipping a supercar around the bend of a racetrack and aiming not for the next apex but at the dirt track running perpendicular to the course and leading off into the infield. One moment you're listening for the telltale signs of rubber breaking away from asphalt, tires at the limit of adhesion—the next, there is no such sound, only the V-10 singing behind you as you sling sideways into a sandy curve. Welcome to the 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, perhaps the most brain-bending supercar ever built.

Birthed over dinner (and no doubt drinks) at the tail end of the Lamborghini Urus' development, the new Huracán Sterrato is what happens when supercar engineers are allowed to stop chasing numbers and instead focus on fun. A sort of 21st century reinterpretation of a Group B rally car, the Huracán Sterrato marries the littlest Lambo's inherent on-road goodness with off-road hardware designed to help its drivers explore dirt trails and desert washes at serious speed.

The key to this is unsurprisingly found lurking behind and beneath the 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato's engorged and textured fender arches. Ride height is bumped up by 1.7 inches over the 2020 MotorTrend Best Driver's Car-winning Huracán Evo (upon which it's based), to 6.4 inches. The car's MagneRide dampers are also reworked for more wheel travel and retuned to handle the off-roader's potentially different loads. For example, softening up the nose under heavy braking in the Sterrato's unique Rally drive mode allows quicker turn-in. Backing up the suspension changes is a unique set of Bridgestone rubber. The Dueler All-Terrain AT002 run-flat tires, fit on downsized 19-inch wheels (the smallest size that will clear the Huracán's brakes), are designed to provide high-speed grip in dirt, gravel, and mud while not entirely sacrificing the Lamborghini's on-road performance.

Rounding out the package is a mid-mounted 5.2-liter V-10, detuned to 602 hp from 630 because Lamborghini had to seal off the Huracán's side-mounted air intakes to avoid dirt and dust ingestion, replacing them with a single roof-mounted scoop. Torque remains flat at 413 lb-ft, with power routed through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox into an all-wheel-drive system backed up by a mechanical rear limited-slip differential. Full-length aluminum underbody skidplates, rally lights, roof rails, and some extra body cladding complete the look. Minor nips and tucks to the bumpers and rockers give the Huracán Sterrato an approach, breakover, and departure angle of 10.4/14.7/26.5 degrees, respectively.

On paper this combo seems like a cynical attempt to milk some extra life out of the Huracán as Lamborghini readies its replacement. In practice it may just be among the most lighthearted and fun Lambos ever built.

To prove it, Lamborghini invited us to Chuckwalla Raceway, located smack dab in the middle of California's Coachella Valley. The 17-turn course stretches for roughly 2.5 miles, twisting through desert scrub and hills, with a distinctive Nordschleife-like 10-degree bowl on its back half. At least that's normally how it goes. But instead of diving for the late left-hand hairpin in turns four and five, Lamborghini sent us straight into the infield, where a 1.25-mile dirt course that largely mimicked the twists and turns of the proper circuit awaited us. Each lap would be a rallycross-style 50/50 mix of asphalt and sand. Excellent.

Exiting pit lane onto the first straight, I toggled the Huracán Sterrato into Sport mode, planted the throttle, grabbed the next gear with the meaty column-mounted carbon-fiber shift paddle, and listened to the V-10's song fight with my poor passenger's voice as he shouted instructions to me in Italian-accented English. I tried to tune it out, attempting to suss out the tires' and brakes' limits as the g load pinned us into our seats for the first corners.

"Don't brake; you're going too slow," he said as we approached the fourth corner. "Aim for the cone—Rally mode, off the track, second gear, go!"

I thumbed the Sterrato into Rally, downshifted into second, and braced for impact as we left the track into a sweeping left-hander in soft sand. There was none. Instead, the Huracán transitioned seamlessly from pavement to sand as I attempted to mentally switch gears from staying planted on my line on the road to sliding sideways off it.

Before I knew it, we were back on pavement, rounding the bowl, lining up for the next lap.

Then it all clicked.

While it's no pre-running pickup, a hint of such greatness occurred in the 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato as we navigated the infield section of the course in Rally mode. Speaking as someone who's spun a Huracán RWD before, the Sterrato is infinitely chuckable off-road. Give it a little Scandinavian flick as you enter a corner and start feeding in throttle and countersteer, and the Sterrato's all-wheel-drive system and completely transparent stability control tuning help you hold drifts effortlessly, keeping the nose pointed at an apex and ultimately toward the next straight. This Huracán also likes being steered by throttle input; downshift and come off the gas as you approach a sandy downhill sweeper, for instance, and you can start your turn with throttle input, maintaining your slip angle simply by flexing your right foot as the responsive V-10 sings behind you. Despite the relatively minor changes Lamborghini made to the Huracán Sterrato's suspension, it did a fantastic job of keeping the grippy Bridgestones in contact with the rutted terrain and making impacts one-and-done affairs.

Despite its off-road cred, the Huracán Sterrato didn't give up much on the track's paved portion, either. On straightaways, your brain is tricked into driving it hard like any other supercar, though the first time you attempt to brake late from triple-digit speeds you are surprised by the feel of the all-terrains squirming underneath you. Similarly, despite the quick, communicative steering, the Sterrato doesn't corner in the same neutral way as other Huracáns. It instead reminds me a bit of the old Ford RS200 Evo, leaning subtly onto the outside tires as you carve into the corner, though the Lamborghini is capable of exploding out of bends in ways Group B cars like the Ford were never capable of.

Outside the racetrack's confines, the Huracán Sterrato makes even more sense than the stock car—already among the most comfortable supercars to live with. Extra cushion from the tire sidewall and the added ride height mean you don't have to constantly dodge potholes and dips in the road, so you can focus instead on enjoying the drive. Visibility—never a Lamborghini strong suit—is improved slightly by the additional ride height, and cabin noise levels remain impressively quiet, even with a touch more noise from the wind whipping around the auxiliary lights and roof rails and from the tires. Complaining about noise in a Lamborghini is a bit silly, though; simply turn up the stereo or mat the gas and instead enjoy the V-10's exotic yowl as it spins north of 4,000 rpm.

Ultimately, what's clearest about the new 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato is that the Italian automaker's engineers were allowed for a moment to forget about chasing straight-up performance, and they instead focused on fun. Not a single Lamborghini engineer—or indeed a person that's driven the Sterrato—can talk about it without breaking into a smile. It's silly, slightly stupid, and sort of pointlessly perfect. Lamborghini's engineering team has fallen so in love with the car—limited to 1,499 examples worldwide—that it's taken to bringing one along to every single development drive it does as a new baseline for fun. Couple that playfulness with the Huracán Sterrato's natural underlying capability, and you have a car that's bound to go down as one of Lamborghini's greats.