I drove Lamborghini’s Huracan Sterrato – it’s their best car ever

ONLY the most resilient forms of life can thrive in Chuckwalla Valley, deep in the Californian desert.

Lizards, mostly. A few petrolheads. And not much else.

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It’s baking hot here. The landscape is arid. Nothing but a sea of sand and mountains stretching for miles in all directions.

You’re at least two hours from the nearest Taco Bell.

Chuckwalla is where General Patton prepared American tank battalions for combat in the Sahara during World War Two.

Eighty years on, I’m in the exact same spot to test a different kind of weapon.

The Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato. The first Lambo supercar specially armoured for off-road thrills. But also the last Huracan before retirement.

While initially it feels plain wrong to be hammering a supercar around on a rallycross track, pretty soon the car’s capabilities encourage you to go berserk.

So that’s exactly what I did.

Obliterating the lap record.

Boom.

“We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack again” was Patton’s inspiring battlecry.

You really can in a Sterrato.

To help it handle the rough stuff, Lambo raised the ride height, softened the suspension, widened the front and rear track, and added the usual underbody protection, body cladding, snorkel and chunky tyres.

The all-wheel drive system is electronically controlled and specially calibrated to be playful yet predictable in low-grip conditions. Just press “Rally” mode on the steering wheel and release your inner Colin McRae.

Because the next ten minutes or so are going to be fun.

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I’ve got to say, flat out sideways in a Lambo, kicking up a huge rooster tail of dust, with that V10 screaming over your shoulder . . . I’ve had worse days.

But the funny thing is, away from Chuckwalla, Sterrato is also a brilliant car on normal roads.

The long-travel suspension is excellent for soaking up potholes and speed humps.

The 4WD system will keep you moving in winter.

The body cladding protects it from car park scrapes.

It just needs cup holders.

‘Merged opposites’

Lambo’s chief tech guy Rouven Mohr told me: “We have merged opposites with this car. The most extreme Huracan and the most comfortable Huracan are actually the same thing.”

Sterrato (it’s Italian for dirt road) actually started life as a skunkworks side project by engineers developing the Urus SUV.

It was an “R&D toy” (research and development) painted like the legendary Alitalia Lancia Stratos.

The business case came much later.

Now Sterrato has sold out THREE times.

Bosses initially planned to make 1,000, then upped it to 1,063 (ten for V10 and 63 for the year Lambo was founded) and then upped it again to 1,499.

All gone.

The Sterrato costs £232k, almost £30k more than a Huracan Tecnica, and its buyers are then spending yet another £40k-£50k on personalisation and extras.

Costs a bomb.

Goes like a bomb.

Chuckwalla was like a war zone when we left it.

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