It’s no secret Lamborghini wasn’t entirely delighted to have Audi’s Dr Hackenberg continually butt in to the press conference at the
Huracan tech day
presentation and remind us how much of the car is shared with, or simply supplied by, the Germans. Parts and platform sharing is, of course, commonplace but I don’t ever recall senior VW personnel gatecrashing Bentley launches and using the press conference to point out which bits were shared with the Skoda Octavia. Or Dr H being welcome at the
Porsche Macan
launch to tell the assembled throng ‘Ja, but it’s just a Q5 really…”
Hackenberg not shy about asserting ownership
Following a terse introduction from Hackenberg in which he explained how struck he was by the poor quality control when Audi first took over at Sant’Agata you can appreciate why the Lamborghini team may have felt a little aggrieved.
How do I know this? Well, I did have my collar felt by Lamborghini PR at the Geneva VW group night to be told there was a bit too much Audi in the PH Huracan story. With a request that, perhaps, future discussion might focus a little more on the Italian passion of its engineering and styling. Rather than its German roots.
A sense of romance is, of course, what might make you choose to sit behind a wheel with a raging bull in its centre, rather than the four rings. Even if the actual wheel was the same component. And Lamborghini’s habit of attaching evocative sounding Italian descriptions to technical features certainly does pluck the heart strings more successfully. Were you in company where it’s polite to compare gearboxes (I think PH might be that place) would you rather say your car’s gears were shifted by a Lamborghini Doppia Frizione transmission? Or Direkt Schalt Getriebe? Do you prefer your super unleaded injected by Iniezione Diretta Stratificata or Benzin-Direkteinspritzung? Indeed, a Lamborghini technical spec is about the only one of its type you could read in polite company and actually sound half cool. Romantic even.
OK, possibly stretching it a bit there.
Huracan should pluck the heartstrings
Anyway, there’s no escaping much of
the engineering muscle
in the Huracan is German. So how is Lamborghini to ensure that the soul remains suitably Italian? Going to the considerable effort of a parallel direct and indirect fuel injection system to sneak a 5.2-litre naturally aspirated V10 past the emissions legislators isn’t a bad start. At the press conference Lambo boss Stephan Winkelmann was asked if Lamborghini would ever consider turbo engines and he gave a long and elegant answer that basically said “not until we have a gun to our heads.” Which is cool. If Lamborghini can’t be the last bastion of a proper normally aspirated supercar motor who can be.
Here I sense an opportunity for both Audi and Lamborghini to put some real distance between the Huracan and the forthcoming second-gen R8 with which it will share its carbon/aluminium chassis. Distance that wasn’t necessarily there with the Gallardo and original R8.
Give the next one Vorsprung Durch Turbos
Leave the Huracan to do the mentalist thing and keep Ferrari honest, as was its founder’s intention from the start. And make a version of the 4.0-litre ‘inside out’ twin-turbo V8 Audi developed for
the RS6
gave to Bentley
– that becomes the signature feature of the new R8. Thus equipped it’d be philosophically aligned to go head to head with the similarly powered McLaren 12C/650S and Porsche 911 Turbo and maintain a more distinctively Audi Vorsprung Durch Technik mentality.
They might share the same platform but a Terminator cool twin-turbo R8 and a properly bonkers normally aspirated V10 Huracan would put useful ground between the two brands. And stop the likes of us sniffing around Lamborghini engine bays to snigger at the number of Audi stamped components.
Vid from Lamborghini of the tech presentation
here
