First Drive: 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato Defines 'Off-road Supercar'

A Lamborghini rep squats low next to my driver’s door teaching me how to use a satellite phone in broken English: Pull the antenna, turn on, wait for a bit, and dial the emergency number taped to the phone’s case. You know, just in case we get lost or break down in Joshua Tree National Park, where the plan for the day includes, without exaggeration, off-roading a brand spankin' new 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato.

That would be the new safari-style Sterrato package, in which I sit on a bright morning in the parking lot of the ultra-hip Parker Palm Springs hotel. Lined up before we leave, each Sterrato sure looks the business with fender flares, light pods, a functional roof scoop, rock rails, and knobby tires. But the fact that Lambo believes a group of average journalists can actually take this supercar off the asphalt belies comprehension. And the fact that lawyers ever signed off on the day’s program simply boggles the mind.

Road Testing 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, an Off-road Supercar

The temptations overwhelm rational thought immediately. I pull off the low speed-limit JTNP asphalt at the first graded dirt road we pass, admittedly a bit nervous to discover how the car handles some slippery stuff. The tiniest flick of the steering wheel sends Sterrato just a bit sideways before we pause for photos. We truly can’t help ourselves when another dirt road stretches off towards the horizon, so those knobby tires get a second chance to skitter around a bit before the all-wheel-drive and traction control systems rein us in. My co-driver, Matt Farah, and I stifle laughs, but we also know to take things easy, since the rest of the day on track at Chuckwalla will allow for plenty of shenanigans in a more controlled environment.

In the meantime, a couple hours on-road reveal an already impressive daily drivability that Lamborghini clearly wanted to emphasize before the going gets full-blown crazy. The lifted suspension, 44 millimeters higher than a standard Huracán with longer travel shocks front and rear, softens up road imperfections noticeably. The balanced chassis leans, then squats through corners where an Evo or Tecnica would just, you know, corner, without any body roll whatsoever.

In Sterrato, communication between road and driver actually improves, so even if we might be going a bit slower—the taller sidewalls and all-terrain tread of those tires simply don’t grip quite as well as full-race rubber—the sensation brings out a bit more of the fun factor without multiplying speed limits and risking quite as much police attention.

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Those taller tires come courtesy of Bridgestone, essentially copy-pasting an all-terrain tread pattern onto the Potenza sport and race inner construction, but built with a unique compound to allow for a top speed of 168 miles per hour. A hybrid spiral layer of aramid and nylon also makes the tires able to run flat at 0 PSI for a claimed 50 miles at 50 mph, which adds at least a smidge of confidence while engaging in a day of absolute recklessness. Talk about a unique use case, which prompted Lamborghini to ask multiple tire manufacturers for bids before eventually choosing Bridgestone as official partner for the project.

The tires aren’t too loud on the road, though the barking V10 drowns out most other auditory cues. I do notice a bit of wind noise from the roof scoop at highway speeds, and even if the scoop allows for cleaner air to enter the engine, it also completely ruins all semblance of rear visibility. A digital rearview mirror—as available on multiple Chevrolet commuter cars, for example—would go a long way.

Chucking a Supercar Around Chuckwalla Raceway

We have a long way to go to reach Chuckwalla on time, so Farah and I only venture a bit off JTNP’s beaten path for our quick photo sessions. Our car’s yellow might contrast perfectly with warning signs at every park entrance, but someone mentions that the color combines with black plastic cladding to produce vague Subaru Crosstrek and Pontiac Aztek impressions. Now, I can’t unsee that. Lambo’s promo images in matte green and gunmetal gray look much better, especially with dust and dirt everywhere.

After another stint on the 10 freeway headed east, we turn into Chuckwalla where Lambo has set up the rally stage-style track day for the group. For approximately half of the 2.33-mile circuit, Lambo wants us to dip into the infield and whip around in the dirt. Helmets on and happy about the Euro-spec roll cage, it’s time to get serious.

I want to warm up the tires for the first quarter-lap or so on pavement. The same body roll and squirrelly braking crops up immediately during a long right-hander, and test driver Nicolò Piancastelli in the passenger seat urges me to push harder into more throttle, which in Corsa mode produces a solid tail-happy drift before the front wheels pull us out onto the straightaway.

Coming up fast dead ahead, a coned chicane forces me to brake hard and pop the paddle shifters down into second gear, then Piancastelli hollers over the intercom that I should push the steering wheel’s bottom button down into Rally mode. My mind reels as I point straight into the dirt for the first time. Usually, I spend the whole time on track trying to avoid exactly this.

The enthusiasm of Rouven Mohr, Lamborghini's chief technical officer, comes to mind as we bounce down into the runoff zone. Mohr spearheaded the Sterrato from a mere inkling years ago, then advocated an even briefer rally course experience during the Urus Performante’s surprising debut last fall in Italy. If he believes this car can handle the day’s torture testing, then so must I.

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Having fun is the name of the game while driving any sports car in low-traction situations, as I learned only a couple of weeks prior at DirtFish outside Seattle. But the Huracán sits in a whole different stratosphere of performance and pulling around the first sandy corner, I want the front wheels perfectly straight before I unleash all 610 horsepower (SAE) from the 5.2-liter V10. In my excitement, I’ve completely forgotten to left-foot brake as DirtFish taught me, but that’s less important when my right foot controls an ultra-responsive naturally aspirated engine hooked up to a dual-clutch gearbox with split-second paddle shifts keeping us right in the rev range. No turbos to spool up here—just mat the gas and we slam back into our seats as the Bridgestones hook up with surprising grip, prototypical Lambo exhaust howling all the while.

Even in Rally mode, all that power quickly becomes unnecessary with the steering wheel at even a slight angle. Mohr and his team devoted much of the Sterrato’s development to fine-tuning the ESC settings with optimum torque vectoring and braking intervention to help the front wheels pull through corners without killing the perfect amount of peppy oversteer. But I can still feel the computer throttling us back, to the point that even with the pedal to the metal, we often barely accelerate at all.

How does it all combine? A light touch of the brakes dips the nose and shifts weight forward, creating even more grip and turn-in before I whip in a bit of counter-steer and hammer the throttle. The rears step out and I center the fronts again while giving a bit of gas, then more and more until the Sterrato decides to give up the goose and hand me back control of every last horsepower.

That mid-engined balance produces minimal understeer, unlike the Subaru STI at DirtFish, but I’m leaning on the ESC too much. The actual steering weight, which the various drive modes do not adjust, feels perfect both on road and off. But I do miss the column-mounted paddles entirely, and more than a few times. Smaller wheel-mounted paddles would help especially in this exact situation, when lightning-quick opposite input becomes necessary on the regular.

Turning Off the Nannies

After the infield half-lap, we jump back onto the pavement, come to a complete stop for a second to dump dirt out of the wheels, then charge through a slalom of cones before Piancastelli once more hollers at me to four-wheel drift around the final corner. By the time we land back in the dirt on my second lap, I begin to get my bearings—on the car and circuit—and trim a full 30 seconds off my time from the first time around. At least I’ve now convinced Piancastelli to let me try ESC off for a lap or so of the next session—or maybe, he hedges, as we cruise around for a cool down lap.

Starting off the next session, I tamely keep a clean line with the ESC still on in Rally mode, hoping to engender more confidence in my driving abilities. Sure enough, while I brake in the chicane on the second lap, Piancastelli leans over and switches off the ESC fully. Here we go, I think, and immediately almost send my hind legs out ahead of my fronts.

The instantaneous fishtailing at every opportunity proves, to an extent, how good of a job Mohr managed to do with the computer programming. At the same time, as I steer more and more with my right foot, I can finally get into a better rhythm rather than simply flooring it and waiting for the car to agree with my enthusiasm—or so I think.

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On a downhill left-right sequence, I nearly run the left rear tire completely off course and have to slam the brakes, bringing us almost to a complete stop. Jumping back up onto the asphalt shortly thereafter, a bit of leftover twitchiness in my steering input reveals how much I need to focus on predicting weight transfer, or setting my steering and throttle inputs, then trusting the car to come around smoothly rather than reacting to every little bump and jumble. Then, with ESC still off, I nail a final four-wheel burner perfectly around the last corner before the finish line. What a car.

I hear that Lambo’s test drivers set a best lap time of 3:07. As logged by the onboard telemetry, my best lap with ESC on was 3:08.024. Then somehow I hit 3:08.286 with ESC completely off and purposeful drifts on every corner. I’m hooked, I’m improving, I’m dialing in my dirt driving, and I want more, but Lambo has the crew at Chuckwalla cleaning up the circuit’s off-road portion between every third lap to prevent too much bottoming out and jumping. On some of the worst ruts and whoops, to be clear, my helmet definitely slammed into the Huracán’s roof as we caught air. This is still a low-slung supercar, don’t forget.

A Perfectly Absurd Sendoff for the Supercar Era

Yep, I’m talking about jumping a Huracán. Not many sane humans can say something so blatantly absurd. But they wanted me to do it. On purpose! And not just for Instagram. In fact, I capture exactly none of the track driving for social media because I’m too amped to even remember my phone in my pocket.

A day in the Sterrato reveals how perfectly Lamborghini planned a sendoff for the company’s final N/A V10 engine. The 8,500-rpm redline combines with long-travel suspension, skid plates, and roof rails to produce such stupid, silly fun—right in line with the unhinged performance that supercars in the 2000s first brought to the table. It's something that only Lambo could now get away with, and why not? Thinking ahead, I'm sure ice and snow would be a riot in the Sterrato too, and Bridgestone will offer winter tires to fit.

Is the Sterrato the real deal, though? As soon as Lamborghini confirmed the rumors, immediate comparisons to Porsche’s recent safari-inspired 911 Dakar cropped up. Porsche succumbed to the craze by essentially installing a front axle lift system on the rear suspension (actually, somewhat similar to the original 959’s hydraulic lift, as opposed to the air suspension that has now become de rigeuer on luxury SUVs like the Cayenne). Dakar also gets smaller wheels and taller tires than a Carrera S, which quite possibly lives up to the 911’s daily driver ethos even better. But Porsche undoubtedly made a big mistake—in terms of company heritage, driver engagement, and future collectability—by opting against a manual transmission in the AWD Dakar.

Related: Lamborghini CTO Rouven Mohr on Creating the Huracán Sterrato

Instead, now the dual-clutch and V10 of the Lambo seem, at least on paper, somewhat similar. Unlike Porsche, Lamborghini moved the Huracán’s front axle forward to allow for the improved suspension travel and to re-center larger tires in the wider cladded wheel arches. This was actually an easy job, Mohr told me, thanks to the aluminum construction of the space-frame chassis.

Yet, both Porsche and Lamborghini know full well that approximately zero percent of buyers will actually do what we just did in the Sterrato once deliveries of this off-roading supercar begin later this year. Hence the semi-sufficient skid plates and rock sliders made of reinforced plastic rather than beefier aluminum, which would add a few more pounds (and also look a lot better). As the goodies sit now, Instagram reels with rooftop tents and posing on Rodeo Drive seem 1,000 percent more likely.

The roof rails can only support 88 pounds—plus the functional scoop might cause problems for a tent, regardless. But it’s the thought that counts. Maybe a stack of staggered spares mounted on crossbars, just not while rally racing on the clock at Chuckwalla.

After a long day of road-tripping and hilarious hooning, the smooth ride of a Urus back to our hotel for the night seems absolutely luxurious. I almost fall asleep as our chauffeur pilots us directly into the bright setting sun, daydreams beginning to crop in about factory support for a Huracán Sterrato rally team at Baja, or even charging along against Porsche at Dakar. Mohr assured me that no such plans exist, outside my dreams anyway. Then again, I just lived out the dream of sending a $273,177 (to start) supercar sliding sideways in the dirt. Turns out, at least sometimes, real life can live up to such insane imaginings.

[From $273,177; lamborghini.com]