Lamborghini Huracán LP610-4 Spyder: review

Part of that pleasure is how it looks. The Huracán in this guise looks the same as the hard-top, except for that piece of roof. The fabric roof can be put up in 17sec, and the only intrusion is the extra 100kg this necessitates over the coupe. But there are subtle changes to the bodywork so that the air flows past the cabin and not into it. You won’t lose your baseball cap with the roof down.

The air flows round and over, and on to the massively high rear deck. It’s so high you can barely see over it with the mirror. Thank goodness police cars have those blue lights right up high on the roof so at least you should be able to glimpse those.

While you can see how it looks, you can’t hear how it sounds from this review. There are times when you think they took off the roof just so you could hear the engine better. Not that it was exactly quiet before, but the soulful cacophony behind your head is now very much part of the driving experience.

The engine is the same, that 5.2-litre V10, and the sounds it makes while pouring out its 602bhp is enough to make your hair stand on end. Which is difficult if you have a baseball cap on. There’s a wailing, popping, howling V10 sound that you can’t help let rev up the range towards the crescendo of a gearchange.

Twitch a big paddle, and the seven-speed dual-clutch auto deftly slots in the next ratio and you’re off again. It’s addictive, it must be said. And of course very powerful. There’s an immense amount of thrust under all conditions, slightly tamed by the four-wheel drive system. This is one very fast car, capable of ripping up to over 200mph, and you’re never going to forget that.

What does sometimes happen when you take the roof off is you get a slight loss of chassis integrity. Driving around Miami, we couldn’t put that to the ultimate test, but below the edges it felt just like the coupe. It’s wide, planted, and very secure on its standard dampers. It has full control of any but the most broken-down surfaces, and while it’s firm it’s not solid.

At this point you might be thinking ‘Hell yeah, I’ll have me one of them’. But not everything is as perfect as that soundtrack. The steering, in this case the Variable Ratio Dynamic Steering, really isn’t fully up to the job of both steering and talking to you at the same time. This is the same issue as in the coupe.

And that four-wheel drive system puts a thin layer of electronic distance between you and the experience. It tends to understeer a touch before you really want it to, and it reduces the connection between throttle and road.

Perhaps for the ultra purist there is also a tiny question over its handling due to removing the roof, but then, as we mentioned earlier, perhaps we should spend more time enjoying ourselves and less time looking like our idea of fun is sucking a frozen lemon.

This Spyder is a lot of money, over £200k, but for that you get the looks, the performance, the sound and the sheer presence and entertainment of something that shouts ‘Let’s have fun!’

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Lamborghini Huracán LP610-4 Spyder

Location: Miami

On sale: March

Price: £205,000

Engine: V10, 5204cc, petrol

Power: 602bhp at 8250rpm

Torque: 412lb ft at 6500rpm

Gearbox: 7-spd dual-clutch automatic

Dry weight: 1542kg

Top speed: 201mph

0-62mph: 3.4sec

Economy: 23mpg (combined)

CO2/tax band: 285g/km, 37%