LAMBORGHINI TEMERARIO

Lambo's V10 died with the Huracán. Its replacement? A new V8 with two turbos and three electric motors

- MATT SAUNDERS

Unlike its various predecessors, Lamborghini's new junior supercar can't give you 10 cylinders - but it is offering 10,000rpm instead.

Being what Sant'Agata calls a high-performance electrified vehicle, or HPEV (that's a PHEV to everyone else), it can do electric-only running, of course. Just like its V12-engined big sibling, the Revuelto, it has taken very large leaps on power and outright performance, as well as smaller ones on size and passenger space, all of which we will come to.

But most of all, and despite having now hybridised the pair of them, Lamborghini wants the Temerario to have a different character from the bigger, faster, more serious Revuelto. It wants this car to be fun. Playful, rebellious and a bit of a tearaway. And, wouldn't you know it, that's what it seems to be.

This is precisely the kind of Huracán replacement you might come up with having learned - after introducing STO, Tecnica and Sterrato derivatives - that adding more and more power, revs and carbonfibre bodywork isn't the only route to enriching the appeal of a mid-engined exotic sports car. Or, put another way, that you can use the latest asymmetrical electric torque-vectoring technology in a different way from how it is executed on the Revuelto - to create even more accessible limit-handling appeal and something really compelling to drive on track at less than maximum-attack pace.

Notably, Lamborghini chose not to remove the atmospheric V12 when it hybridised the bigger Revuelto. Like it or not, though, the Huracán's sensational V10 has gone - and, 10,000rpm V8 or not, it will certainly be missed.