So many of today's supercars are praised for their agreeable livability. Their daily driverness. "Everyday supercar" is a phrase you see thrown around headlines a lot. But not for the 2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo RWD Spyder. It rejects all that politeness; chews it up and spits it right back in the face of those lesser, pandering cars. This Lamborghini is a car that's bad in all the best ways and it doesn't give a fuck.
And yes, you read that right. It's a 2020 model Lamborghini sent out for evaluation in the waning half of 2021. I thought this was funny, too. But as I found with the rest of the car, the Evo RWD Spyder cannot be bogged down by something as arbitrary as a model year. Time is meaningless for the Huracán, a fact that is never more apparent than when you're behind the wheel of one of these things.
2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo RWD Spyder: By the Numbers
- Base price (as tested): $233,123 ($288,183)
- Powertrain: 5.2-liter V10 | 7-speed dual-clutch | rear-wheel drive
- Horsepower: 610 @ 8,000 rpm
- Torque: 413 lb-ft at 6,500 rpm
- 0-62: 3.5 seconds (est.)
- Top speed: 201 mph
- Curb weight: 3,326 pounds
- Seating capacity: 2
- Cargo volume: 3.5 cubic feet
- EPA fuel economy: 13 mpg city | 18 highway | 15 combined
- Quick take: Loud, harsh, brutally fast. The Evo RWD Spyder offers the trifecta of the supercar experience.
Rear-Driven
First, let's break down the name because it's a long one.
The Lamborghini Huracán succeeded the Lamborghini Gallardo in 2014 as the Huracán LP 610-4. In 2019, the car underwent a mid-cycle refresh that included more aggressive styling and dropping the old alphanumeric aspect of its name in favor of simply "Evo." Soon after, a rear-wheel-drive variant of the Huracán Evo debuted, followed by the Spyder version—which in Lamborghini-speak, means convertible.
And though the names have changed, what fundamentally made the Gallardo a Gallardo and a Huracán a Huracán did not: in this case a naturally aspirated, 5.2-liter screamer of a V10, mounted snugly between the axles. Long gone is the violent, single-clutch e-gear transmission; there's now a sweetly smooth seven-speed dual-clutch transmission with which to handle all the power.
Take a listen:
With a body made from something called "thermoplastic resin" and aluminum, the car sits on an aluminum and carbon fiber chassis. Bigger front air intakes, a gloss-black rear bumper, and a new front splitter set the RWD version apart from the four-wheel-drive Spyder model. Painted white and with acid-green brake calipers and interior contrast stitching, the test car looked rightly evil. In profile, you can see a clear diagonal line slashing upwards from the car's nose to its tail. Wedge-shaped cars may largely be extinct now but their essence is at least still alive in the Evo RWD Spyder.
Now for Some Bellyaching
Because I'm a worthless, ungrateful sack of meat, I will bemoan sitting in the Huracán Evo Spyder for a bit.
For how large it is on the outside, it translates to precisely zero livable room on the inside. The front trunk is hilariously small, the carbon-fiber bucket seats are hard as rocks and do not raise so I spent the entire weekend guessing as to where the car ended, and there are zero cupholders. You are not allowed to hydrate while sitting in the Lamborghini. These are the rules, it seems.
You'll have to do some muscle-memory readjustment, too. Perhaps owing to the fact that the column-mounted paddle shifters are roughly the size of bananas, there are no windshield wiper or turn signal stalks behind the wheel. Instead, thumb-operated switches for both are found on the steering wheel. All other lighting controls are relegated to a panel above your left knee that is impossible to see unless you have your face craned down past the steering wheel.
Putting the car into park, reverse, and neutral are all handled easily from center console buttons, but putting the car in drive involves pulling the right-hand paddle. This is fine in theory but annoying in practice because sometimes your hands are turned with the wheel when trying to perform a multi-point turn and you have to remember not to reach for the center console.
With the top up, it's quite claustrophobic. With the top down, things are slightly better, but there are still blind spots capable of disappearing an entire Chevy Suburban. There also did not appear to be any lane-change assists that I could find, so you really have to have faith that no one is hanging out in your blind spot as you go to merge. As a bonus, the car's 8.4-inch infotainment screen—already fitted with a clunky and difficult-to-navigate UI—becomes nearly unreadable from the sun's overhead glare.
And finally, the car's digital speedometer bezel is cut off by its own gauge cluster hood. Why? Who's to say!
Reigning in That Engine
So the Evo RWD Spyder is pretty bad at being a car. But as an experience, it's something else altogether.
Today, there is blessedly no shortage of cars that make over 600 horsepower. Most immediately, I can recall the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, which made an easy 668 hp to its rear wheels. Yet it's such a friendly 668 that you won't feel intimidated by it at all. The Lamborghini's 610 hp couldn't have a more different translation. Properly feral, it, too, is rear-wheel-drive but you'll know it as soon as you get on the gas. This is no point-and-shoot hammer.
Antagonize it in its most hardcore Corsa mode on a damp road and the rear end dances as the tires plead for grip. With the steering wheel wiggling joyfully in your hands, you counter-wiggle to keep things pointed straight. Watch the digital needle sweep up the digital tach while the engine does its banshee shriek behind your head. Feel the V10's might vibrate your very tendons. Grab another gear by yanking the heavy paddle, half-expect a pause in the shout of power—but it never comes. Transmission shifts flick by smoothly with barely an interruption to the engine's fury.
That's because everything—the steering, the grip, the transmission, the stability control, the powerful, powerful brakes, and you—are there to serve the king that is the engine. You all have a job to do and that job is to rein in the beast. The threshold for utterly screwing up in the Lamborghini is far lower than in other cars with similar power. You can and will get into trouble if you misjudge things here. This is not to say the car feels unsafe to drive, just that the threat of danger is much more real. Hoon responsibly.
Acceleration is refreshingly violent. I'm so used to all-wheel-drive acceleration by now—stuff that feels like you're being slingshotted toward the horizon by a giant rubber band—that I'd forgotten what carnivorous rear-drive acceleration is like. The entire car feels like it's rearing back like a cobra about to strike and when the front wheels finally catch up to what's being demanded of them, they sink their claws into the pavement to help rip everything forward.
It's hard, man. It's just so hard to drive the Huracán Evo Spyder like a normal car because everything about it fundamentally rejects the idea. It starts up with the force and volume of a small bomb. And once going, it is far too easy to fling it out of turns and feel the superb chassis and balance pivot around you. Too easy to floor it everywhere and let the howl of its 10 cylinders fill your ears and your blood. Too easy to ride that smooth, interrupted power delivery like a chariot up to the heavens. Why would I drive normally when I could do this?
But we must exercise some restraint now and again. It's what living in a society is all about.
In the tamest Strada mode, the roar clips down to a purr and the Lamborghini does its best to behave. It's a convincing show, too, with the angular body slipping past the unsuspecting. In these cases, the car's design shouts far louder than its exhaust does. It draws eyes wherever it goes, however, and it's a little bit like being famous.
And after having completely shown my ass with how bad I was at using the manual top on a Porsche 718 Spyder, the Lamborghini's electronically controlled soft top was a true luxury. It could be put down or up in about 17 seconds while the car was moving at up to speeds of 31 mph. In fact, that roof is the only aspect of the car I felt had any consideration for me and my own convenience.
Understanding the Assignment
Nobody will ever accuse the Evo RWD Spyder of gross crimes such as being "an everyday supercar," "comfortable," or "practical."
Today's supercars are soft by comparison. Damped to the point where you could road-trip them cross country and with trunks big enough for Costco runs, you could drive one as your only car if you didn't have many friends and were just adventurous enough. Whereas cars like the Acura NSX, McLarens, and even the Audi R8 that's so closely related to the Huracán all attempt to straddle delivering both performance and daily usability, the Evo RWD Spyder is an utterly uncompromising supercar. It's far more brutal, rawer, and louder than anything in its class.
Driving the Evo RWD Spyder became physically exhausting after a while. I longed for some silence and to give my bones a rest. But these are also my own physical shortcomings. The car itself is so superbly hedonistic that you must contort both your body and mind around it in order to accommodate it. It exists to serve no one but itself. It doesn't give two shits about you, your schedule, or your contentment. And it is not something someone buys by accident. Anyone driving around in one of these things is quietly suffering in a way or another. But they also know it's worth it. Lamborghini understood the assignment. That's abundantly clear.
We've all heard stories of how bad old supercars were: loud, hot, harsh, incommodious. And we give them a pass, because vintage supercar. But don't think such cars are extinct—relegated to memory and the pages of old automotive quarterly publications—yet. At least one still exists in the year of our lord 2021. The Lamborghini Huracán Evo RWD Spyder is unyieldingly terrible at being a car. But it is perfectly vintage supercar—defiantly, gloriously incarnate.
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