Why Lamborghini's Huracán Sterrato is the wildest supercar on the road today

Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian tests the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato both on, and off-road in the California desert.

Video transcript

[RACE CAR PASSING]

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hey, guys. Pras here, the Yahoo Finance, and I'm in the desert heat here in California testing this, the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato. Essentially, a car that I say is built by a mad scientist. In this case, that would be Lamborghini CEO, Stephan Winkelmann.

Essentially, this car is a rally-inspired off-road, on-road, off-track, tarmac, loose gravel, whatever you want to call it. This car can go there. I've never seen anything like that before in my life.

It's here. I'm going to test drive it. We'll see how it is right now.

All right. So I'm inside the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato out here on regular road. So we'll start here with the actual car itself and the design, before we get into the actual driving both on and off. But speaking of design, I've always been a fan of the Huracan.

I think it just has a re purposed built look to it. It's got those elements that Lamborghini, sort of, used when designing the car the, sort of, viper snake like appearance. That they've, sort of, incorporated for many years now, and it's aged, I think, very well.

But in this case, because of the nature of this car and its MO to be both on and off road car, you've got the, kind of, extra bulky, kind of, the cladding on the side, the wider fenders. I mean, of course, you have the lights in the front. Like at the lights in the front that, kind of, hearkened back to the old rally car days of yore, kind of, group B spec and things like that. But this car, of course, is still a Huracan.

But let's talk about the fact that it's been lifted about 1.7 inches above the ground. And it's Scott special tires made by BFGoodrich that are essentially performance car tires. But they've added the dueler style of the BFGoodrich dual or the SUV style, like, you know, grippy or knobby or chunkier tread on there so the car can go off road.

And, of course, we flipped down to the back where we have this Lamborghini placed the air intake on the top to sort of avoid getting in dust and particles into the air into the engine intake there. So we have the up top, and you have a, sort of, louver design in the back of windshield, can't really see much of the back with this looks like a pretty substantial crossbar here for racing applications in case the car flipped over, which we don't want to happen.

Anyway, under the hood, we have the hurricane STOs v 10. I mean, this thing is just-- it just sounds awesome.

[RACE CAR ACCELERATING]

There you go. So this puts out around 600 horsepower, a little bit detuned from the actual STO because of the nature of the engine having to intake. They had, sort of, closed off some of those air intakes to-- for dust and particle purposes to keep that out of the engine, so they-- the detuned slightly still good horsepower is good torque.

All fed to all-wheel drive haldex, all-wheel drive system that I'll talk about more when you go into the rally mode can do its own thing. Magnetic ride, magnetic suspension for the adjustability, and in this case of a suspension, in this case, we have shocks, and things like that, that can actually have more travel when the car is going on and off road for a sort of bumpy terrain. Also, we're locking differential when you go to rally mode to give more power to the ground.

So, let's talk about the off-road experience first. So, I took this car on track here in Southern California. It also had a Lamborghini built, an off-road component as well. So it's going to be on-road and off-road.

On-road, of course, this car drives a supercar, we know that. It's not surprising. Off-road is where this car was just blowing my mind. It's absolutely insane. We were going on loose gravel, sand, dirt, ruts, deep ruts.

And with the way that the dynamics of the car with a rear bias of the all-wheel drive system, you break into a turn, he then swings out, hit the gas, and it corrects itself. And I'm telling you, initially, I was a little scared because this car was just-- has had so much power. But the way the system works is it knows how to put the power down. You put the power on, it corrects itself from swing out, all-wheel drive system keeps it in place with the kind of like the brake actuated vectoring and things like that, and it's just a dynamic experience.

It was so crazy to watch you to get a hold of you kept the driver is what kept saying, the car will correct itself. Give it trust. The car will correct itself. Give a gas, give a gas, give a gas. And I did, and eventually, it was sort of like, you sort of started understanding how the car dynamics work, then it was sort of second nature.

But we're talking about in the most slipperiest terrain, where you feel like you're driving a boat out a car, right? Because it's just-- there's just really not that much grip. It's absolutely incredible. You cannot beat the car, does it?

On the road-- I'll keep it short, on the road we're a little bit higher up, which actually is not that bad. You get a bit more visibility. But it drives like a supercar, but you're not afraid to like maybe go over bumps.

You're not going to hit. You're not going to bottom out. You're not going to scrape the bottom. You're not afraid of, like, some rocks and stuff.

And sand, you got-- you got these wider fenders that are going to like kind of absorb that. So on-road, it's totally fine. Off-road is where you cannot believe they made this car. And that's where I sort of alluded to some beginning. It's like a mad scientist made this car.

And the mad scientist wants to find Winkelmann wanting to make something like this. Oh, when he came back to the company, and here it is nearly 1,500 examples are going to make, or already all sold out. Not surprisingly, when you consider this, there's nothing like this on the road.

There is nothing like this car on the road. It's sui generis, it's completely unique. The rally mode is amazing. At this year, it is just an unbelievably fun time in a car like this. I cannot explain it.

I'll probably never have the opportunity to drive a car like this ever again because, of course, all these examples are sold out. But if you do have the means, you do see the car aftermarket and it's something that you want, that's totally-- you know, most bonkers car, maybe Lamborghini's ever made, or for that matter, that's out there right now for any automaker. This is it the hurricane-- Huracan Sterrato, absolutely unbelievable feat of engineering here.

This car, I can't believe it exists. But it does. And we should be thankful that it does. And there's cars like that people actually want.

I forgot to mention, this is such an image at the top. This is the last naturally aspirated v 10 car Lamborghini will make. The Huracan replacement will then be probably a hybrid. So this is it. This is going to be a hot car, no doubt.

Anyway, I'm Pras. This is the Huracan Sterrato, first drive. Unbelievable car. Thanks, guys.