When it was first rumored that the replacement for the Lamborghini Huracan would feature a V8 instead of a V10, everyone got a bit scared. After all, the only other V8 in Lamborghini’s arsenal was the corporate four-liter motor found in everything from the Urus to the Audi S8. Potent? Absolutely. Evocative? No. However, Lamborghini’s now come clean about the new baby Lambo’s engine, and it has our eyebrows fully cocked.
This isn’t some parts bin corporate motor plucked from the Urus SUV — it’s a flat-plane crank design revving to 10,000 rpm. For everyone complaining about how Lamborghini doesn’t seem that mad anymore, a redline like that ought to do the trick.
The only precedent for a street V8 with a five-figure redline is the three-liter unit in the Ariel Atom 500, and that was a vastly different beast than the new Lamborghini engine. It was a naturally aspirated ultra-short-stroke engine with Suzuki Hayabusa roots, while this is a hot-vee twin-turbo V8 with a finger-follower valvetrain and titanium connecting rods pushing out a heady 789 horsepower from 9,000 rpm to 9,750 rpm. That’s around 197 horsepower per liter, and it’ll have electrical assistance that should help fill turbo lag.
See, Lamborghini is going all-electrified, and this V8 makes up just one part of a hybrid powertrain. There’s an axial flux electric motor between the engine and the transaxle and two more electric motors in play, but the assistance itself isn’t massively punchy. We’re only talking about an extra 146 horsepower and 221 lb.-ft. of torque, and while that’s still the output of an entire entry-level EV, it’s clear that the V8 will be singing the loudest here.
Will the V10 still be missed? Absolutely. It’s a weird and captivating engine filling the white space between a V8 and a V12. The relationship between crankshaft rotation and individual firing intervals imbues high-revving V10s with a bewitching sonic range, a banshee wail piercing the sky. As all other supercar makers turned to V8s or even V6s in their entry-level cars, Lamborghini and Audi stuck it out with ten atmospherically fed cylinders, offering a little extra pantomime. In the forced induction age, this engine was an anomaly that seared itself into our memories. It’s a hard thing to replace.
However, a flat-plane crank V8 screaming at 10,000 rpm has the potential to have a profound effect. Sure, turbochargers do muffle sound, but if anyone knows a thing or two about making cars as obnoxious as possible, it’s Lamborghini. Plus, there’s a more important story here: The hybrid supercar era took longer than expected to arrive, but it’s getting seriously interesting. Ferrari has its first truly pretty mid-engined car since the 458 Speciale and it’s rocking a 120-degree V6, McLaren has a car with no physical reverse gear, and Lamborghini has a 10,000 rpm V8. It’s about time that supercars got exciting again, isn’t it?(Photo credits: Lamborghini)
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Hopefully Audi will stick it into RS6. Hot wagon with 10000rpm redline is thing of beauty.
Considering how much the RS6 weighs, a 10k rpm would make it feel even more sluggish than it is already.
Sure, but the hybrid huracan replacement isn’t going to be weather weight either. But the point is the noise. Think about the dogs and children! Little something something into their lives.
I used to get so excited about Lamborghinis and all the crazy fancy cars. But as I’ve grown up and the ugly face of reality hits, I find myself getting more excited about the next generation Honda Prelude and Toyota MR2, maybe it’s just me but it’s hard to get excited about something unattainable nowadays
The lack of excitement is a combination of two things. The first is that we’ve been spoiled for performance since the mid 1980s. There isn’t a landscape of pretty but weak cars, and most improvements since the year 2000 have been incremental. Compare a 1978 Chevrolet Corvette Anniversary to a 1985 Corvette LT1 to a 1992 Corvette ZR-1 to a 2001 Corvette Z06 and each time there’s a moon jump in performance each time. Meanwhile since 2006 most cars have been slotting themselves into specific performance tiers because the diminishing returns are so astonishingly diminished. The last true “exotic”, the last car that the world paid attention to, the last car to fight for global supremacy instead of fitting into a tier, was the Bugatti Veyron… A car from 2005. Nearly twenty years ago now. The second reason partially plays into the first, in that we haven’t had a sudden and drastic reduction in performance that created a hunger for faster cars. Without a Malaise Era there’s no goal to get back to, no expectation of defying the stringent restrictions that killed the golden gods so that we can create a new pantheon.
I honestly don’t care about Ferrari but V6’s are lame.
Hot take:
I4 – meh
I5 – very cool
I6 – cool
V6 – lame
VR6 – interesting
V8 – always cool
V10 – cool
V12 – awesome
Any turbo/super modifiers & boxers? What about 3’s?
Turbo or supercharger bumps you up to cool, unless paired with a CVT. Any manual is automatically cool.
Anything weird like an inline 3 or straight 8 or V16 is automatically cool.
What? No love for straight 8s or V16s?
I’ll allow it
I would love to see a ‘pure’ version of the vehicle this goes into… so no turbos, an even higher redline and a manual transmission… produced in limited numbers for a higher price.
This is exactly what I’d wish for the 296 GTB, if they made one it’d instantly become my dream car, bar none. That 120 degree V6 sounds incredible, but with hidden turbochargers (what I call it when companies tune turbos specifically to feel naturally aspirated instead of letting the turbos turbo) and a dual clutch, it’s still far behind the Cayman GT4 and Lotus Emira in terms of involvement.
And I think that’s a pity, because Italy always had so much flair, and now all you get is an amazing engine locked behind a fully software-operated drivetrain. The only mechanical control left is steering, and we still can’t make EPAS match older systems in feedback. I know we can’t expect everything to be an Elise, but when a manual transmission is the only thing we can do for engagement, it’s the least we can do. Nowadays, the most involving thing coming out of Italy is the 500 Abarth, which is really a spiced up, reheated, defrosted and then reheated again version of an economy car from 2008. Not even the 124 survived.
Italy straight-up makes emissions exceptions for Ferrari and Lamborghini, and they choose to spend their money developing multiple 800hp turbo engines that still lose to Porsche in racing instead of ONE manual transaxle that would revitalize their brand images. Meanwhile, Porsche literally can’t make enough GT-series cars because people are tripping over each other, checkbook in hand, for anything N/A, anything manual. Refusing a slice of that pie is pure danger-to-self-and-others insanity. There’s no excuse. It’s not like people with money only just started lining up for them, even the most unctuous of poseurs are crying for it. There’s simply no excuse. I understand Mercedes and Audi sticking to autos, they’re volume-selling companies that rely on sales. But Ferrari? A manual 296 would sell enough T-shirts and phone cases to fund their F1 program. Lamborghini? Posters with a picture of the shifter would sell enough Uruses to cause a world cocaine shortage. Hell, they’re part of Audi, they have the development budget for ANYTHING! Halo brands need halo cars, and halo cars NEED to be special. There. is. no. excuse.
They take their car culture very seriously. If not made there, they don’t want any Italian insignia.
Ferrari and Lamborghini have learnt their lesson from Porsche:
If you want to make money, sell SUVs.
Everything else is just a rounding error.
GET OUTTA HERE WITH THAT DEVIL-TALK!!!
*sobs*
You’re not wrong, they certainly did catch onto that, and I hope that gives them the cash injection they need to develop a transmission.
I just feel like they’ve missed the other half of the memo, that high-end crossovers don’t sell themselves. People buy them by brand association. And right now, people aren’t excited about their brands.
Let’s examine just Lamborghini. They’ve had to squeeze every drop from the Aventado and Huracan, because they can’t make a new car every few years like Toyota. When you’re locked into these elongated production cycles by your budget and size, there’s no amount of cutting-edge performance or “future-proof” technology that will keep you relevant until you’re ready to release a real update. The only way to keep something like that afloat is by making it unique. Lamborghini got that right last time, the Huracan manages to be special after all that time because it alone carries the V10 flag (The R8 is a Huragan), outliving even the Viper, while the Aventador stayed afloat because nobody else offers a mid-engine V12 under Three Million Dollars. These are the only cars of their kind you can walk into a dealership and buy today.
That brings us to the next engine generation. They’re keeping the V12, a choice everyone loved, but what about this new V8? I’m sure it’ll scream at redline and make impressive amounts of power, but will it still be impressive in 5, 10 years? It’s all fine and good when Dodge or AMG make the most powerful V8 or I4 or whatever, they’re big enough to sustain an arms race when Chevy or BMW come swinging an even bigger number, but what will Lamborghini do when they dry up their budget for the decade developing a world-beating TT V8, and the Corvette gets a better one 2 years later? At least with an NA V10 they can use purity as an excuse when the Z06R1 Carbon Fiber IMSA Limited IF IT LASTS LONGER THAN FOUR HOURS CALL YOUR DOCTOR Edition” pulls a faster 0-60 or a higher top speed, but when they start playing the same game as everyone else, making the same kind of engine in the same mounting location, they’re obligated to win.
And I hope they do.
(sorry about the long rant, I feel very strongly about this topic)
If smaller engines with fewer cylinders are allowed in supercars again can BMW please repeat the longitudinal mid-mounted straight six M1?
It’s the only car I can think of with the right layout of engine the right way round in the right part of the car. I wish I could dream of something more attainable, or available, but I have to keep my inner engine dork happy.
Style it really, really carefully BMW, or I’ll cut you.
Me thinks you may want to sharpen your blades now, just in case.
A majority of the engineers from the i8 program are no longer at BMW, so it would be next to impossible for another mid-engined car to happen. That’s the sad unfortunate truth… It’s easier to iterate on a vehicle program than it is to create a new one.
They created the i8 platform from scratch, they could do it again for a new M1.
I know they won’t though.
They can create it from scratch and there was even a next gen i8 planned before covid killed it. Sadly it’s been 4 years since that was killed and the BMW vehicle program landscape looks different now.
This is how you do supercars in the current era. If you can’t get the engine you want, make the next best thing even more insane than we could have expected. I would have loved for it to forego turbos, but practically for the higher-volume entry level car, this makes the most sense.
Also see:
Lamborghini Revuelto with an NA V12 + Hybrid system
Bugatti NA V16 Hybrid
Other things I’m sure I’m blanking on
Hell ya, I’ve been hoping this would get explored by someone. Honestly who cares that the v10 is gone, that they’re bringing out a high winding NA engine at all is incredible. Really hope this trend makes its way down-market. I’d love to see the return of high revving NA engines that use a hybrid system to improve emissions, mileage, and low end torque, instead of all these soulless turbo 4 vacuum cleaners. Imagine BMW or Porsche bringing back high winding NA 6s that can still get 40+ mpg thanks to hybridization.
This is hate speech
This engine is turbocharged.
My reading comprehension this morning
Embarassingly non-existent
I will add though I don’t see why turbos are mandatory to make this idea work at a lower level…and it’s not that I don’t think v10s are cool, but that it is getting replaced with a seriously interesting v8 is a lot better than how this could’ve gone down imo
V10omous is dead, long live V10Komous.
Man, I am here for the revival of small, rev happy engines.
Same. Smaller displacement often sounds better.
Sure, you can tune an exhaust or intake for specific resonances, but I’d just rather things sound great from the beginning.
These are going to make a sweet sound as they are revved to the point of catching fire by Instagram douche bags.