2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo review

If Leonardo Da Vinci visited the Louvre and elbowed his way to the Mona Lisa, odds are he’d come up with a list of changes he would like to make if he could start from scratch. Gustave Eiffel might tweak the design of his tower if he walked through the streets of Paris in 2019 and caught a glimpse of it standing tall above the buildings that surround it. Nothing is 100% perfect, not even the objects commonly filed under the “masterpiece” category. The Lamborghini Huracán is no exception.

Lamborghini found several ways to improve its V10-powered sensation. It made small but significant design modifications, mechanical updates to the sonorous V10 engine, and added tech features that turn the Huracán into a smarter, more modern, more user-friendly machine. The coupe – which still stands out as Lamborghini’s all-time best-seller – gained the Evo suffix during the transition.

The 2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo remains a mono-spec model. You didn’t think the Italian firm would offer a stripped-out base model with cloth upholstery and steel wheels, did you? Pricing starts at precisely $261,274 before options and a destination charge are factored in. The list of standard features includes an 8.4-inch touchscreen for the brand-new infotainment system, a digital instrument cluster, grippy Pirelli tires developed specifically for Lamborghini, and supple leather on the seats.

Coming to a wallpaper near you

The visual modifications made to the Huracán Evo aren’t drastic, yet they give it seven percent more downforce compared to the outgoing Huracán LP610-4 while improving engine cooling by 16 percent. Up front, stylists integrated a redesigned splitter into the bottom part of the bumper and added air curtains. The overall silhouette doesn’t change, however, and traces its roots to the Marcello Gandini-designed Countach.

From a design standpoint, the back end is our favorite part of the Huracán Evo. It follows the path blazed by the Huracán Performante with an air vent that stretches from side to side, a pair of round exhaust tips mounted higher up on the fascia than before, and a bigger spoiler. Bumping the exhaust outlets up gives the Huracán’s rump a look that’s part GT3-spec race car, part superbike. It also let designers fit a much taller air diffuser. New alloy wheel designs round out the list of visual updates.

Inside, the big news is the addition of a brand-new infotainment system displayed on an 8.4-inch touchscreen embedded into the center console. The outgoing Huracán LP610-4 doesn’t have a touchscreen; the infotainment system is displayed on the digital instrument cluster. The rest of the cabin is familiar. You still sit low in the Huracán, and you still feel like you’re in the cockpit of a fighter jet about to take off from an aircraft carrier.

The smartest bull yet

Not long ago, building a supercar required a powerful engine, a striking design, and little else. That doesn’t cut it in 2019.

Maurizio Reggiani, the head of Lamborghini’s research and development department, told Digital Trends connectivity is a trend his company can’t afford to ignore. The average Lamborghini owner is surprisingly young, so buyers demand features like smartphone connectivity and state-of-the-art infotainment. To that end, the Huracán gets a tablet-like touch screen that replaces the two dozen buttons previously housed on the center console, including the volume knob. Lamborghini developed the software in-house.

The screen’s resolution is sharp, its response is almost as quick as the gas pedal’s, and the graphics are gorgeous and on-brand. It’s packed with some cool features, too. We like the available telemetry system, which uses footage captured by two cameras (one above the windshield, one behind the driver) and data sent from the various sensors to paint a digital image of a track run. After a session of hot laps, drivers can sit back, watch each lap, and see key data like where they braked, where they accelerated, the steering angle at any point in the track, and the overall line they followed.

The menu that provides information about the car in real-time is a treat for gearheads. It shows the angle at which the front and rear wheels are turned and the amount of torque sent to either axle, among other data.

Lamborghini rationalizes the Huracán doesn’t need a volume knob. Passengers can adjust the volume by placing two fingers on the screen and swiping up or down, and they can mute the sound by taping the screen with three fingers. This solution works well, and we understand the thinking behind it, it doesn’t work as well as an old-fashioned volume knob. Many automakers have backpedaled after deleting the volume knob, and we suspect Lamborghini will do the same.

Apple CarPlay compatibility comes standard. Lamborghini will add Android Auto compatibility to the Huracán Evo in the near future, Digital Trends can reveal. Owners can also download an app called Lamborghini Unica that unlocks exclusive content like brand-related news, exclusive previews of new models, and VIP access to races the brand competes in. It’s fitting, then, that the Huracán Evo made its debut on the app before Lamborghini introduced it to the rest of the world.

The one tech feature that’s not available on the Huracán Evo is a head-ups display. Reggiani explained no current solution is compatible with the 27-degree angle of the windshield, leaving a HUD out of the realm of possibility. For now.

The mind-reader

Lamborghini values tradition, so it continues to resist the downsizing and turbocharging trends sweeping across every segment of the automotive industry. It stuffed the Performante’s naturally-aspirated, 5.2-liter V10 engine behind the Evo’s passenger compartment. In terms of displacement, it’s the biggest engine in its competitive set. The 10-cylinder makes 640 horsepower – a generous 30-horse increase over the LP610-4 – at a wailing 8,000 rpm, and 442 pound-feet of torque at 6,500 rpm, thanks in part to titanium valves with more lift and a lighter exhaust system.

The V10 spins all four wheels through a seven-speed, dual-clutch automatic transmission. It can be left in drive, or shifted manually using chunky steering wheel-mounted paddles. Those specifications place the Evo in the exclusive group of cars capable of hitting 60 mph from a stop in under three seconds.

Our test took place on the Bahrain International Circuit, a fairly recent track with several long, high-speed sections, a wide variety of corners, and a decent amount of elevation changes. The V10’s intoxicating soundtrack filled the cabin as soon as we left the pit lane, and it took a single sprint onto the track to get an accurate feel for how quick the Huracán Evo is. It reaches 60 mph faster than you can tie your left shoe, and it crosses the 124-mph mark so quickly and effortlessly that it feels unreal. Hold on tight; this isn’t Gran Turismo. Huge carbon ceramic brakes confidently slow the Huracán down lap after lap. We felt a little bit of squirm from the rear end under hard braking, but only while approaching the end of the main straight at around 170 mph.

The V10 engine and the brakes are only part of the story. Reggiani’s team made massive changes to the Huracán’s chassis. They added a four-wheel steering system derived from the system found in the mighty Aventador S, torque vectoring, and an electronic brain called Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata (LDVI) whose task is to analyze data sent by an armada of sensors and anticipate the driver’s next move. In a way, this car can read your mind. Let us explain.

Accelerator and gyroscope sensors installed in the car’s center of gravity monitor its lateral, longitudinal, and vertical movements every 20 milliseconds. Additional sensors keep track of what the magnetorheological suspension and the traction control system are doing. These sensors channel all of this data to the LDVI, which then analyzes it and decides the correct amount of torque needed as well as how to best distribute it between the axles. The LDVI examines the driver’s inputs, too. For example, if the Huracán is in Corsa mode and the driver’s foot quickly goes from the gas to the brake, it assumes the car is on a track and about to go into a corner. Lamborghini calls this feed-forward (rather than feedback).

It sounds quite complicated, and it is; stitching this all together requires a terrific amount of electronic wizardry. The important part is that we felt none of it happening as we raced from corner to corner.

We’re familiar with the Huracán. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time in the Evo’s predecessor, the LP610-4, and we drifted around the Losail International Circuit in the rear-wheel drive LP580-2 model. As soon as we exited the first corner, we knew the four-wheel steering turned the Huracán into a smaller, nimbler car that tackles bends with a lot more finesse than before. The dynamic steering is not as heavy as we’d like, but it’s communicative and precise. The turn-in is sharp, the adaptive suspension counters the laws of physics by keeping the car neatly flat, and the immense amount of grip provided by both the all-wheel drive system and the standard-fit Pirelli tires helps the V10 pelt the Huracán out of a corner. It manages to feel analog in spite of the endless computing happening in the background. The driving aids are there to save your butt if you carry too much speed into a corner, and to help you set quicker lap times. They don’t trespass onto the territory of driving enjoyment.

LDVI allows the Huracán to drift, which we happily did. It’s not a drift mode, though. It simply tells the drivetrain and the driving aids “it’s okay, let the rear end off its leash.” The driver remains responsible for starting the drift, maintaining it, and exiting it with the front end pointed in the right direction.

Lamborghini says it made the Huracán Evo more comfortable in Strada mode. In spite of the high-speed shenanigans we enjoyed, it remains an all-around car that many buyers drive daily, so usability represents an important part of the equation. We weren’t able to drive it on public roads, so all we can confirm is that flicking the steering wheel-mounted switch to Strada hushes the exhaust considerably.

The axis of power

Though there are many cars in the Huracán Evo’s price bracket, its two main rivals are the Ferrari Portofino and the McLaren 570S, models which start at approximately $215,000 and $200,000, respectively. The Portofino is a completely different animal than the Huracán; it’s not as hardcore, and it’s a convertible. The 570S better aligns itself with the Huracán, and its interior is also loaded with tech features, but its twin-turbocharged V8 lacks the charm of Lamborghini’s naturally-aspirated V10 engine. Note that McLaren offers a more road trip-friendly model named 570GT. Lamborghini doesn’t.

Peace of mind

The Lamborghini Huracán Evo comes with front and side airbags in addition to driving aids like traction and stability control systems. Like every Lamborghini, it comes with a three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty, and a 12-year warranty against corrosion. 

How DT would configure this car

Lamborghini’s Ad Personam program would let us configure the Huracan Evo any way we want it. If money wasn’t a consideration, we’d get ours in gray – a color rarely seen on a Lamborghini – with a red leather interior. It’s loud and head-turning as-is. Every feature we could ever want comes standard, including the 8.4-inch touchscreen, online navigation, leather upholstery, and carbon ceramic brakes, so the only box we’d tick on the list of options is the telemetry system.

Conclusion

Lamborghini kept the best parts of the Huracán LP610-4 and cleverly leveraged tech to design a supercar that’s smarter, quicker, and more focused on the track. It’s not all about numbers, though. The Huracán Evo’s most rewarding aspect is not quantifiable; the specifications don’t fully convey driving engagement or enjoyment. The experience of driving full-throttle with a naturally-aspirated, 5.2-liter V10 screaming its heads off a foot away from your eardrums is second to none.