Lamborghini Roars Off-Road With New $273,000 Huracán Sterrato: Review

A couple of things came to mind. First, Lamborghini has no record of competitive success in rugged realms, such as cross-country endurance races. In the 60 years since the Italian brand roared to life in Sant’Agata Bolognese, it hasn’t participated in the rough-and-tumble international rallies that tend to bag bragging rights for Audi, BMW and Porsche.

Second, it feels like a cash grab. This is the final year of the current-generation Huracán, a popular Lamborghini street model that started production in 2014. It’s not really a surprise executives were tempted into throwing a lift kit and some knobby wheels onto their bestselling coupe to squeeze a bigger margin out of the last few models. After all, that’s a business strategy perfected by Porsche, with variants like the sand-trekking 911 Dakar. But Lamborghini is at its best when it’s being true to its own iconoclastic nature—not copying others.

Nonetheless, I kept my heart and mind open as I slathered SPF 50 on my face and shoved my hair into a helmet. I was determined to give the Sterrato a fair shake.

A coupe with Brutalist overtones and a low seat position, the all-wheel-drive Sterrato comes with a 601-horsepower, V10 engine and 413 pound-feet of torque. With a wider stance than its Huracán siblings, an armory’s worth of protective cladding, rally-cross headlights, a lifted nose and rear exhaust, and an elevated overall profile, it’s the final model Lamborghini will ever introduce that’s powered purely by internal combustion.

In the pit lane at Chuckwalla, I climbed into one painted like a can of Orange Crush. Lamborghini had converted the 2.3-mile track into a combination rally course that’s one-third asphalt and two-thirds off-road terrain, including elevation changes, gravel, rocks, packed dirt and deep, soft soil. Each lap around the track would take me through both environments.

Mario Fasanetto, a Lamborghini development driver with 38 years of experience, told me the large duct on the roof would work as a snorkel directing clean air to the engine in case we got into dust. He said there were metal plates over the wheel well of the car’s run-flat tires and along its undercarriage that would protect it like a breastplate if I bottomed out over rocks or fishtailed along heavy scrub.

An extra 44 millimeters (1.7 inches) of height over the wheels would allow me to hurdle over boulders, for a total of 162mm of clearance. A new “Rally” drive mode would muzzle the safety systems that Huracáns ordinarily come with, like electronic stability control, so the car could drift and dance across deep dirt like John Travolta in .

I raised an eyebrow. Is all of that armor really necessary?

And then I drove it. The answer, in a word, is: . The Martian terrain I encountered the second I slid off the concrete demanded it. I pressed the gas and felt the car sink into the dirt before surging forward, then I quickly spun the wheel to the left, following a tiny black sign with an arrow in the direction I should take. Fasanetto used the term “off-road track” loosely; I couldn’t discern any obvious course cut into the terrain as I whipped around dead trees and cacti.

I was dumbfounded by how much I could thrash the car without lifting my foot off the gas. Fasanetto, with a silver coiffure and biceps bulging out of his polo shirt, sat in the passenger seat barking commands.

I’ve always considered the standard Huracán exemplary, with scalpel-precise steering and a raw power that forces you back into your seat like a punch to the shoulder. But with only 5 inches of clearance, the carbon-fiber front splitter inevitably scratches at the slightest incline, and the wheels cost thousands of dollars to replace should you scrape them—so driving the street-going model engenders a certain level of anxiety. Even if the repair costs weren’t a deterrent, the time spent replacing damaged components would annoy me, if I owned one.

The Sterrato, on the other hand, liberates you from such concerns.

Under the sun at Chuckwalla, dodging the scampering lizards by the same name, I cruised across the loose earth, shifting from second to third to fourth gear, then dove and dipped around corners as I brushed the carbon-ceramic brakes. I was driving this Lambo rougher than I’d driven trucks from Rivian, harder than I’ve driven Porsches on snow and Land Rovers on sand. It took the abuse so well, I felt as if we might just go ahead and take the back roads all the way to Vegas. I scraped the bottom of the car multiple times. It didn’t matter.

Fasanetto seemed pleased. He told me the Sterrato has modified torque distribution and adjusted stability control calibrations for extra power with uneven surfaces. Lamborghini increased the distance the wheels can travel up and down—25% more than the Huracán in the front, 35% more in rear—and widened its stance to help it navigate snow, ice and mud, and it’ll still jump to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds, just 0.2 seconds slower than the standard Huracán and a fraction of a second quicker than Porsche’s off-roader, the 911 Dakar.

I pulled back onto the paved portion of track after my excursion off-piste and put his claim to the test, reaching for seventh gear as I inched toward the car’s 161 mph top speed. Blazing down the backstretch, snapped back into race-track velocity, I almost forgot the off-road chaos. But when I stepped out of the car, the thick dust covering that soda can of a paint job brought it all back.

As for my skepticism? By the end of the day, after treating the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato like my personal dune buggy, I’d dropped any doubts about its raison d’être somewhere back in the sagebrush. I just wanted another ride.

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