Lamborghini Temerario review

Smaller Lamborghini puts on size, muscle - and three electric motors - and aims for playfulness as well as power

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Unlike its various predecessors, Lamborghini’s new ‘junior’ supercar - the Lamborghini Temerario - can’t give you ten cylinders; but it is offering 10,000rpm instead.

Being what Sant’Agata calls a ‘High Performance Electrified Vehicle’, or HPEV for short (that’s a PHEV that could also be an early-round answer on ITV’s The 1% Club), it can do electric-only running, of course. Just like its bigger brother the Revuelto did, it’s taken very sizable leaps on power and outright performance; as well as smaller ones on outright size and passenger space, all of which we’ll come to.

But most of all, and despite having now hybridised the pair of them, Lamborghini wants the Temerario to have a different character than the bigger, faster, more serious Revuelto. It wants this car to be fun. Playful, rebellious; and a bit of a tearaway. And, wouldn’t you know it - as far as about ten laps of the Estoril circuit can teach you, at any rate - that’s what it would seem to be.

This is precisely the kind of Huracan replacement you might come up with, then, having learned - after introducing STO, Tecnica and Sterrato derivatives of that last car since 2021 - that adding more and more power and revs and carbonfibre bodywork isn’t the only route to enriching the appeal of a mid-engined exotic sports car. Or, to put it another way, that you can use the latest asymmetrical electric torque-vectoring technology in a different way than it was executed on the Revuelto: to create even more accessible limit-handling appeal, and to make something really compelling to drive on track at less than maximum-attack pace.

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DESIGN & STYLING

lamborghini temerario rear static

Notably, Lamborghini chose not to remove the atmo V12 when it hybridised the bigger Revuelto. Like it or not, though, the Huracan’s sensational V10 has gone. And, 10,000rpm V8s or not, it will certainly be missed.

In its place comes an all-new flat-plane-crank, 4.0-litre V8 with titanium conrods, motorsport-grade finger-follower valvegear, and what Lamborghini technical boss Rouven Mohr rather gleefully describes as “the biggest turbochargers we could find”.

It produces 789bhp all by itself. The fact that it only makes 538lb ft of torque isn’t really a weakness, either; because sandwiched directly between it and the rear-mounted eight-speed DCT gearbox is one of three 148bhp axial flow electric motors, ready to flood the Temerario’s rear wheels with however many pounds foot of twist your right foot might ask for.

Up front, there are two further motors of the same design and output, each one independently driving - and, at times, slowing - each front wheel. And not only to speed up and slow down the car to which they’re attached, but also to manipulate its course and attitude, according to instructions from your hands on the steering and feet on the pedals, interpreted by an all-powerful ‘LVDI 2.0’ chassis brain computer.

The upshot is a car with fully 907bhp of peak system power. One capable of 0-62mph in just 2.7sec, and 213mph at flat chat, despite weighing nearly 300kg more than a Huracan Tecnica did. It retains an aluminium spaceframe chassis and aluminium body (unlike the bigger Revuelto, which is predominantly carbonfibre) that's made at Audi's 'centre of excellent for aluminium' at Neckarsulm, to an entirely new design.

INTERIOR

lamborghini temerario across cabin

On outright length, the Temerario sits about midway between where a Huracan was and where the Revuelto is. It’s 186mm longer than its predecessor; only 40mm of which has gone into the wheelbase, to help make a cabin that supposedly delivers about an inch-and-a-half each of extra driver’s legroom and headroom.

Since I’m 6ft 3in tall and always struggled to fit in a Huracan with a helmet on, I was encouraged to read this; less impressed, however, to find little apparent expansion of the car’s actual accommodation levels in person. There’s a bubble in the roof that would seem to make some extra headroom available; but, if you happen to need to slide the seat all the way back to make room for your legs, your head likely won’t quite line up with it. Well, mine didn’t.

The Temerario’s cabin has all the digital tech and performance drama you’d expect of it. There’s the trademark switchgear apparently borrowed from a fighter jet. Also, all the matt-finish carbonfibre that you could wish for - especially if you add the £30k lightweight package which, combined with the carbon aero kit for the exterior, the titanium exhaust and the carbon wheels, knocks, erm… 25kg off the homologated weight of the car. That’s more than £1000 per kilogram. Actually it’s more, because the wheels cost extra again. But if you were counting… well, you’d probably keep your sub-1400kg Huracan in the first place, wouldn’t you?

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

lamborghini temerario rear track

Lamborghini’s launch event for the Temerario, conducted in late-series production prototypes, was undertaken entirely in short, fairly frantic on-track bursts; and in open-face helmets. So I can’t tell you anything about how it rides or handles on the road - although for a car that, Lambo insists, is often daily driven, those are clearly important factors. Nor how accessible its 907bhp might be in day-to-day driving. For all of that, we’ll await a car in the UK later this year.

I can’t even say, with total confidence, how it sounds - when you’re not wearing an open-face helmet with built-in ear defenders, that is. My impression was that it’s a little bit like a supercar from another town in the Emilia Romagna; because Ferrari, until its recent preference for V6s at least, has probably laid the most prominent claim to the prickly, gristly snarl of a fast-revving, flat-plane-cranked V8. 

Is there the mechanical richness or combustive music here we’ve come to expect from Lamborghini? Not really; not if I’m being picky.

But then none of Maranello’s turbo V8s ever revved much beyond 8000-. The roughness of the Temerio’s engine transforms into fizzing vibration as it runs beyond normal crankspeeds. Because there’s always huge torque available, you could simply forget to keep your foot in.

But then, when you remember to, a car that feels searingly potent even less than halfway through its rev range becomes nothing short of extraordinary as it closes in on the redline. The Temerario doesn’t need to rev to 10,000rpm, honestly. The only reason to let it is because it can. Because you’ll want it to. And, trust me, you will.

The DCT gearbox, meanwhile, is really quick-shifting; the brake pedal reassuringly firm-feeling.

RIDE & HANDLING

lamborghini temerario rear track

Truth be told, the Temerario doesn’t quite seem to stop as urgently as it accelerates; and if there's one place that its weight catches up with it, it's when you're piling into braking areas. But Lamborghini has tuned that torque-vectoring front axle to allow you to carry big speeds here, and to keep working the pedal deep into the turn-in phase, while it bolsters the car’s outright stability. And then - in ‘Sport’ and ‘Drift’ modes, at least - to vector torque the opposite way, to make the car pointy and agile, as soon as you come back on the power. 

The result is more accessible, tangible handling balance than any Huracan or Gallardo had; not less of it, on account of that extra ballast.

The drift mode literally lets you pick your drift angle - 20-, 30- or 40 degrees of positive attitude, at position 1, -2 and -3 on the control knob - which the car’s front axle then imperceptibly helps you to maintain, and ultimately even to tidy up neatly. It’s spookily clever - mostly because it feels so natural.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

If you’d rather it was fast and precise, ‘Corsa’ mode has that covered. But if you want every corner to feel like a conversation between your wrists and right foot - and an engrossing, incremental trading-off of revs, speed, drive, course and angle of attack - ‘Sport’ mode delivers first-order dynamic smarts, and a route to find your own dynamic groove on track, and approach the chassis’s limits in a more expressive way, if you choose to.

Is this some genius dynamic slam dunk, then? We should observe a few reservations. I’m not fully sold on the lightweight, filtered steering, which is no doubt necessarily muted so that you don’t feel everything going on at the front axle - and also to give the Temerario less of a 'He Man' vibe than the one the bigger V12 model has always traded on. I'd like more tactile feel; and I suspect it'll be even more of a miss on the road than track.

Meanwhile, if the chassis can mask its weight as cleverly in its on-road ride as it does on the track - and, at the same time, make its angry-sounding V8 as soulful and enticing as the Huracan’s V10 used to be - I’ll be surprised. Let's wait and see.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

lamborghini temerario front corner

Every supercar brand who’s replaced a mid-engined car that didn’t have hybrid assistance with one that does, over the last few years, has taken the opportunity to crank up the asking price in the process; which might explain why at least some owners have responded to them with some circumspection - and many have kept their deposits in their pockets.

Lamborghini certainly has. The Huracan Technica was some £50,000 cheaper when it emerged in 2022. Put the ‘alleggerita’ lightweight package on your Temerario, and a few other choice options, and it’ll be a £300,000 proposition. While that’s only a price in line with its opposite number from Ferrari, the 296 GTB, it won’t be quite the accessible entry-tier sticker tag that some might expect.

Then again, this a car with a significantly broader range of abilities than the Huracan had; not to mention its huge power level. You’d expect, in short, to pay more for a car with 907bhp. Sant’Agata itself describes the Temerario as a ‘fuoriclasse’ - a car in a league of its own - and would seem to have some grounds to do so.

It’ll be interesting to find out if, without a V10 engine, supercar buyers agree. When most hybrid rivals only deliver six cylinders, perhaps a V8 is all the Temerario really needs; or perhaps the truth will prove to be more complicated than that.

VERDICT

lamborghini temerario rear static

A handful of track laps clearly isn’t enough to say, with any definitive certainty, how far Lamborghini has advanced the various abilities and outright appeal of its smaller super sports car model in 2025. 

As much as it impressed around Estoril’s fast curves, it’ll be even more important to find out whether the Temerario can put as much drama, vigour, theatre and excitement into slower road miles. Because if this car only really feels like it’s delivering above and beyond what its predecessors could do when it’s revving to 9500rpm, launching from rest at maximum torque, or skidding balletically around a wide 90mph bend, it may still be missing something. Limited electric-only running may yet prove to be a poor substitute for the accessible richness and musicality of an atmo V10 engine when you’re just enjoying a weekend ride out. Much, clearly, is still to prove.

But what the Temerario has demonstrated is a capacity for interactive on-track handling flamboyance and mutli-dimensional driver appeal, as well as absolutely first-order pace and drama, neither of which a Huracan could have levelled with.

It has put a very strong foot forwards here, and shown that a hybrid-only Lamborghini brand may have judged its electric transition particularly well, and could well continue on its meteoric upwards commercial trajectory for some time yet.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.