2023 Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato Review: Dakar Craze Moves Absurdly Upscale

There are many gobsmacking vehicles out there that make no rational sense. The Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato is one of them. I mean, really, if you were picking something to drive across Africa would you go with one that barely holds a suitcase and gets 15 mpg on a good day? And, stunning as it is, the deep Sahel is not known for its abundance of gas stations. Nor Neiman Marcuses.

The jacked-up, cladded-up Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato has such a narrow usage case that you might call it the automotive equivalent of a diamond-encrusted waffle maker. At first glance, anyway. What purports to be a supercar for the bush, in fact, turns out to be a supercar for all occasions, which is as much a revelation as it is a contradiction in terms. Do you want your hyper-exotic to be as capable of handling potholed, frost-heaved, possibly salt-encrusted roads as it is at banging off 3.4-second zero-to-60 sprints? Well, uh, hmmm.  

With its acres of black plastic butch-armor, the Sterrato looks like a Merrell trail moccasin, which is to say a supercar built by Subaru. Underneath it’s a regular all-wheel-drive Huracan, except that the intake plumbing to the 5.2-liter V-10 has been routed from the roof to reduce the dust uptake. That cuts horsepower by 30 horses to 602, though peak torque of 413 pound-feet remains unchanged. Still, as the old salts at Rolls-Royce used to say, the power of this car is “adequate.” Indeed, very adequate.

Elsewhere, the Sterrato is denoted by another 1.7 inches in ground clearance and a wider track front and rear. Besides the cladding, exterior telltales include a pair of black blisters on the hood that house LED driving lights, and relatively blocky and fleshy (for a supercar) Bridgestone Dueler AT002 tires. This set of rubber is made specifically for the Sterrato because, obviously, no tire company keeps a design on the shelf for a two-seat, 600-hp, 49-inch-high off-road wonder wedge.

Specs: 2023 Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato

• Price: $301,439/$373,216 (base/as-tested)
• Powertrain: 5.2-liter, DOHC V-10, seven-speed dual-clutch automated manual
• Output: 602 hp at 8000 rpm and 413 lb-ft of torque at 6500 rpm
• Layout: Mid-engine, all-wheel-drive, two-door, two-passenger coupe
• Competition: Porsche 911 Dakar, Mercedes G63 AMG, running the Baja 1000 in any reasonably competitive vehicle.

The Huracan’s rear glass (handy for seeing rearward), is gone, replaced by a race-car-like beetle back with slots for heat extraction that are too small to provide meaningful rear visibility. If The Man is chasing you through the dust, you won’t know about it until they start shooting.

Our test car’s base price of $301,439 (with gas-guzzler tax and an eye-watering $26,162 delivery charge) was boosted by more than $71,000 in options. We could have happily forsaken many of these, including the $16,500 matte white paint (called Bianco Phanes), and the $7600 sport seats, which look fabulous with their deeply bolstered and elegantly stitched contours but wear like suits of iron tailored for grotesquely misshapen people. The seats put such a pressure point on the lower back that a half-hour was all we were able to manage before throbbing pain set in. So, don’t get the sport seats; like ski boots, they only feel good when you step out of them.

Lamborghini’s loan agreement specifically forbade off-road driving. However, thanks to recent landslides in waterlogged California, we were able to experience off-road-like conditions without ever leaving the pavement—or indeed, Los Angeles—thus observing the letter if not the spirit of the agreement. The Sterrato, around 3400 pounds fully fueled, romped over buckled and side-shifted pavement, the suspension with its magnetorheological shocks eating the bumps and ruts with astounding indifference while keeping the car on path. The extra suspension travel provides a welcome break from the jaw-rattling ride most exotic cars deliver over rough patches, and you begin to wonder if this isn’t the best urban runabout you’ve ever driven.

Let’s face it: Thanks to chronic under-maintenance, American infrastructure isn’t what it used to be. The Sterrato is perhaps the perfect middle finger to this sad fact. Things get stiffer if you move the drive mode selector on the wheel from Strada (street) to Sport. The third mode option, Rally, which loosens the stability control intervention even further, makes no appreciable difference if you’re just tooling around and not actually rallying and going for lurid slides in corners.  

Meanwhile, the blessedly turbo-free V-10 burbles and wails behind you, providing slingshot acceleration to its howling 8500-rpm redline whether you leave the transmission in manual mode or kick it down manually with the paddles. When you want to boil through corners, the steering is quick and connected if somewhat isolated from the road (see the McLaren dealer if you demand steering that stiffens and sags with the camber changes) and the grip is locked down. A race track would be the only place most people might notice that the tires are slightly compromised for both on- and off-road duty. Otherwise, they’re plenty sticky. 

Lamborghini’s center touchpad, with its blizzard of menus, is clearly designed for people who have lots of time on their hands (i.e., not while driving). Changing the radio volume is a two-step process and Lamborghini doesn’t deign to include a volume control on the steering wheel among the many buttons there. Ditto adjusting the climate control. You can, however, trigger the high beams from the steering wheel, which is the only way to also illuminate the LED driving lights (operated by a separate switch on the center console). Turn off the high beams and the LEDs turn off too. No doubt having the driving lights available to work at all times violated some dull sub-paragraph of the federal rules.

Even so, and despite the horrendous seats, the Sterrato is a joy to motor around the urban hellscape in because it just seems so unbothered by it all. The company is only committed to building 1499 examples of it, but we’d love to see this rally/Dakar concept make its way into less expensive vehicles. A Subaru BRZ or Toyota Corolla GR or even a Supra with the same treatment? Yes, please!

2023 Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato

Highs: Doesn’t look like your ordinary Lamborghini, a usable supercar even on crumbling roads, eats speed bumps for breakfast.

Lows: Optional sport seats are tortuous, clunky infotainment interface assures distractions, delivery fee is preposterous.

Takeaway: A purchase that seems at first glance to have a very narrow justification, in practice, greatly broadens the justification for purchasing a Lamborghini.

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