Six years ago, Lamborghini put a stripe on a special-edition Gallardo and named it in honor of Valentino Balboni, the company’s longtime test driver. While toiling away over the sticker package, Lambo’s engineers also yanked the front differential and slightly detuned the car, creating the rear-wheel-drive Gallardo LP550-2. Here, finally, was a machine that put itself right up against Ferrari’s mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive V-8–powered cars, something Sant’Agata hadn’t done in decades.
It took six years of Gallardo sales before Lamborghini pulled the trigger on a rear-drive model. In the case of the Gallardo’s replacement, the Huracán, the company isn’t wasting any time, and just a year after the entry-level supercar’s release it is debuting the Huracán LP580-2.
The rear-drive Huracán follows the same recipe that directed the Balboni: The front diff and its attendant hardware is removed, as is 73 pounds of curb weight, and total output is reduced slightly, from 602 horsepower to 572. Peak torque falls to 398 lb-ft from 413. To compensate for the reduced weight on the front end, the nose has been redesigned with additional downforce, while the spring rates also have been fiddled and futzed with to best exploit the car’s newfound 40/60 weight distribution. (On our scales, the AWD Huracán carried 42 percent of its heft in the nose).
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