Lamborghini Huracan STO 2022 Review – International

As a stripped-out racer for the road, the 2022 Lamborghini Huracan STO is as much about paying $596,000 plus on-road costs, for what has been removed as much as for what has been put in.

In the Huracan STO’s case, a lot of stuff has been tossed aside and what has been put in is only there to make it go faster, and going faster costs money, even when the base car is already frighteningly quick.

To make an STO you have to start with a normal Huracan, remove the front differential and propshaft, toss everything in the cabin that isn’t bolted onto the dashboard and discard most of the exterior panels, then start again.

So the interior is all carbon-fibre, down to the door skins and the floor, and even the door-handles have been chucked out in favour of lighter cloth pull-loops.

The seats are new, too, and are carbon-fibre tubs with a surprising amount of adjustment, while a new titanium roll bar sits behind the front seats and a four-point harness drapes across the two bodies it all holds.

It’s a similar piece of weight slashing outside, where 75 per cent of the body panels are now carbon-fibre, including the bonnet, the clamshell front guards and the new, louvred aero engine cover, complete with a high-mounted air scoop.

And it’s enough to shave off 43kg, pulling the STO down to 1339kg, dry.

First revealed in November 2020 (the same month we drove the first prototype), the Huracan STO made its local debut March 2021 and is now being delivered globally – including in Australia, where 49 examples will eventually arrive.

Euro NCAP is never going to buy a Lamborghini Huracan STO to throw against a wall, so we’ll just have to accept that it’s safe enough, or just don’t buy one.

But, besides the titanium roll cage and the four-point harnesses, by far the greatest collection of safety stuff in the STO revolves around passive safety, but only if by “passive safety” you mean “going faster”.

The most effective step anybody can take to improve passive safety is to fit grippier tyres, and the Bridgestone Potenza semi-race rubber is as grippy as tyres get at this level – except when the road is cold or wet.

At 245/30 R20 up front and 305/30 R20 at the back, the Bridgestones are super sticky and not expected to last for the lifetime of the car. In some circumstances, you could see them not lasting to the end of a tank of fuel.

The new rubber is backed up by a new braking carbon-ceramics package, with 390x34mm discs up front and 360x28mm discs at the rear, all clamped by monobloc six-piston callipers at the front and four-piston units at the back.

It’s not trying to hide its core reason for living, and it makes no bones about what it uses its technology for: speed.

This is by now familiar territory, with the 2022 Lamborghini Huracan STO taking the standard 5.2-litre Huracan V10 and strengthening it to basically track-pack specifications.

The dry-sumped V10, which remains unusually under-square for a supercar engine, rips out a sizeable 470kW of power at no less than 8000rpm.

It retains the bit that makes it beautiful – its natural aspiration, shunning of the cheap torque of turbocharging – and makes do with a combination of indirect and direct fuel-injection, to cover both low and high revs.

The odd part is that it has lost 25Nm of torque, down to 575Nm, in the transition from the stock road car, but that never seems to bother it.

Lamborghini claims the Huracan STO will complete the 100km/h sprint in 3.0sec, blast to 200km/h in 9.0sec and keep running to 310km/h, and none of that feels remotely optimistic to us. If anything, it’s pessimistic.

There might have been thoughts that shifting all of this urgency through just the rear tyres could have been ambitious, leaving the rear-end flailing about for traction as the V10 overwhelmed them.

Nothing could be further from reality, not with the magneto rheological dampers in charge and three driving modes at the ready.

The most surprising thing about the 2022 Lamborghini Huracan STO isn’t that it’s fast or even that it’s stupendously fast. No, it’s that it’s easily fast.

It quickly eases initial fears that just two tyres for burning wouldn’t be enough. In fact, the tyres are so grippy and the torque delivery so linear that you have to drive like a total goose in either very cold or very wet conditions to make the rear-end break loose at all.

Otherwise, it just grips and grips to the point where, for the sake of giving you a realistic impression, we can just confirm that it will ALWAYS have more grip than a non-competition driver can use.

You will never outdrive the car.

That’s in spite of it launching at or beyond 1g of acceleration, too, and it takes just an instant for it to draw breath deeply, with its throttle bodies chirping open, to crush your skill against its headrest and hold it there.

The brutal acceleration, like nothing you’d expect to feel outside an all-wheel drive supercar, is disorienting enough for most people, but what hurls you even deeper into a mentally and emotionally disturbed place is the overwhelming clean, screaming howl that accompanies it. There’s just nowhere to hide, even if you close your eyes.

And yet, for all that, it’s not a difficult car to drive quickly. The brakes are brilliant and unstoppable, hauling it down from 200km/h in about 110 metres, time and time again.

It all comes together beautifully whenever a series of corners arrives, and you can approach its limits of grip in a seamless flow of noise and acceleration, belligerent braking, then strong, decisive grip to get through again.

For all the looks of the STO, it’s actually delightful.

If there’s anything Lamborghini has gotten wrong with the Huracan STO, it’s the driving modes.

It has just three, and as an indicator of how sketchy the rubber can be in the wrong conditions, one of those is dedicated to wet-weather driving.

The other two are STO mode and Corsa (track) mode. In STO mode, the steering is much lighter than in Corsa, but the skid-control is too intrusive for enthusiastic hustling and the gearshifts are too slow.

The Corsa’s steering is too heavy for long-term work, but its gearshifts are brilliant and there is so much grip that the skid-control feels superfluous anyway. But you can’t mix and match to find the perfect balance.

And that’s it for criticisms.

This is clearly the best Huracan that Lamborghini has ever built. It looks like a thug but it’s a ballet dancer that sings like a tenor, simultaneously.

Glorious.

How much does the 2022 Lamborghini Huracan STO cost?
Price: $596,000 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 5.2-litre petrol V10
Output: 470kW/575Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: 13.9L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 331g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: N/A