The Lamborghini Huracán is a formidable sports car. Let’s quickly take a look at some vital stats:
5.2L V-10 engine producing 610 hp
all-wheel drive
0-62 mph in 3.2 seconds
Carbon ceramic brakes
But for Lamborghini, a standard Huracán is just the beginning. The latest iteration of this already impressive sports car is the special edition Huracán Performante.
The Performante takes your base Huracán and adds a quite a bit more:
horsepower up to 640
nearly 90 pounds lighter
Active Lamborghini Aerodynamics (ALA) system
All these tweaks and additions led the Huracán Performante to achieve the holy grail for sports and supercar makers everywhere—breaking the lap record at the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife—with a time of six minutes and 52 seconds.
For Lamborghini director of R&D Maurizio Reggiani, making this car was a must for the Italian automaker because of its killer feature the Active Lamborghini Aerodynamics system, or ALA.
“It’s a completely new system that is able to modify the aerodynamic factor of the car in terms of downforce and drag, not moving the spoiler like a majority of cars,” Reggiani says.
It’s a pretty novel system. For example, the ALA system can use air funneled from other parts of the car to ‘stall’ the rear wing when downforce isn’t needed, such as on a long straight. And when downforce is needed, the air stream is cut off and the wing is back to creating downforce, as it was originally intended. Formula 1 race engineers and aerodynamicists have been playing with these tactics for some time now, as rules ban the use of moveable aerodynamic elements.
Just like with most new technology in the auto sector, these things trickle down from the top tier cars to the rest of the range. Owners of current gen-Huracáns might be kicking themselves for missing out on the Huracán Performante, but when it comes time to upgrade in the future, those lucky enough to do so will be singing the praises of Lamborghini’s R&D department.
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Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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