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Lamborghini’s 2025 Temerario is 907-hp hybrid heaven

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In the broad spectrum of supercars and the brands that make them, Lamborghini has always been over on the edgy side, making cars that prioritize attitude and style as much as power and performance. That perhaps best exemplified in the classic Countach, a strong legacy that lives on in a line of vehicles that are typically raw, visceral, and even a little bit intimidating.

How do you manage a personality like that in a time of increasing electrification and sensitivity to the impact of our global vehicular antics? It’s a delicate dance, one that Lamborghini has performed masterfully in the new Temerario, a 907-horsepower supersports car with all the excitement you’d expect from a Lambo plus the sensibility of a plug-in hybrid system — and plenty of advanced technology to tie it all together.

It’s quite an odd mix, but after a day spent at the track, hustling one around at 190 mph and sending it sliding through the turns, I was astonished at how well it all came together.

Hybrid power

The Temerario is actually Lamborghini’s second model to be designed from the start around a hybrid system. It shares a lot with the 1,001-hp Revuelto that came before, but with that car serving as the halo for the brand, the Temerario slots in beneath it. It’s a smaller, lighter, and more attainable option. Okay, take that “attainable” with a grain of salt: The Temerario’s starting price of $382,654 isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s a lot better than the $600,000 starting price on a new Revuelto.

The Temerario replaces the Huracan, which, with its 640-hp V10 engine, served as Lamborghini’s entry-level model for a full decade from 2014 to 2024. The Temerario is a massive upgrade on the power front, making its 907 hp from a variety of sources, starting with a 4.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8. That engine utilizes a flat-plane crank, a design typically used on race engines to enable a sky-high redline.

Compared to the Huracan, the Temerario offers a lower dashboard and simplified controls, plus an 8.4-inch touchscreen.

Compared to the Huracan, the Temerario offers a lower dashboard and simplified controls, plus an 8.4-inch touchscreen.

The Temerario revs to over 10,000 rpm, a number that’s more like a motorcycle than a supercar. Most engines optimized to spin that quickly suffer from extremely poor power down low. Typically, you’d expect that adding a pair of turbochargers would just aggravate that problem.

That’s where the Temerario’s trio of electric motors comes in. The car has two electric motors up front, one turning each wheel, plus a third one that’s integrated into the engine that’s mounted behind the driver. All three are powered by a 3.8-kilowatt-hour battery pack that runs along the transmission tunnel between driver and passenger.

At roughly five percent of the size of the battery pack in something like a Tesla Model 3, the idea here is clearly not long-range, emissions-free motoring. (Lamborghini estimates a max range of just seven miles.) What that pack can do, though, is power those electric motors to give the kind of low-down torque and throttle response that the V8 on its own would otherwise be lacking.

How does it work? Remarkably well.

On the track

To launch the Temerario, Lamborghini chose the Estoril Circuit just outside of Lisbon on the western coast of Portugal. It’s a historic track — Formula One legend Ayrton Senna got his first Formula One victory here in 1985 — but one that was taken off the racing calendar back in the ’90s because it was simply too dangerous.

It’s a bold choice to launch a car like this, with lots of tricky, off-camber corners and ridiculously high speeds, a great place to let a car with over 900 hp stretch its legs. And that it did. On the track’s long, long front straight, I saw 306 kph flash up on the speedometer before I jumped on the brakes. That’s 190 mph, not too far off from the Temerario’s maximum speed of 213 mph.

More important is how it handles in the corners. The Temerario hasn’t just gained six inches in length and 1.6 inches in wheelbase over the outgoing Huracan, it’s also gained weight. Batteries are heavy, as are electric motors, and so the new Temerario weighs over 300 pounds more than its predecessor.

Despite the weight of EV batteries, the Temerario was surprisingly agile when cornering.

Despite the weight of EV batteries, the Temerario was surprisingly agile when cornering.

As such, it’d be easy to expect the car to feel fat and sluggish going through the track’s tighter corners. But that’s absolutely not the case. The car turns into the corners quickly and eagerly, a light feeling to the steering that makes the car feel so nimble to be borderline nervous. Despite that, the steering has great feedback, such that I was able to feel the rough asphalt and jagged curbs beneath the tires.

The car was incredibly eager through the slower, tighter corners, turning in quickly and then happily sending its tail wide as I powered out of the turns. It does have all-wheel drive, but it really feels much more like a rear-drive machine. That is to say: It feels like a Lamborghini.

As I started to get faster and more comfortable with the car later in the day, track temperatures were also coming up, and the Bridgestone Potenza Race tires started to get overheated. This meant the car was moving around a lot more, giving me more of a natural feel for the balance of the car. In long, fast corners, it had a tendency to fall into understeer, where the nose of the car washes wide.

When you're steering quickly, it's easy to unintentionally catch one of the many steering wheel-mounted button with your palm.

When you’re steering quickly, it’s easy to unintentionally catch one of the many steering wheel-mounted button with your palm.

But that’s where those two electric motors up front come into play. By spinning up the outside wheel, the Temerario can help pull the nose back into the apex, making you feel like an almost superhuman driver. There’s even a drift mode that uses the front motors to pivot the car more easily, kicking the tail out with the greatest of ease.

It’s all wild fun, with the only fly in the ointment being the steering wheel of all things. As on many Lamborghinis, the Temerario takes many of the controls typically found on stalks, like wipers and turn signals, and moves them to buttons on the face of the wheel. When you’re steering quickly, it’s easy to unintentionally catch a button with your palm. On three separate occasions I accidentally set off the windshield wipers, which can be a little distracting when you’re slinging yourself around a corner at 140 mph.

Daily capabilities

Despite how frisky the Temerario feels on the track, Lamborghini’s representatives were adamant that this is a car suitable for daily driving. To that end, there’s more headroom and legroom than before, plus a relatively large storage compartment up front between the wheels.

The overall design of the interior is a big step above the Huracan, which felt cramped and claustrophobic and a bit busy with endless rows of toggles and buttons meant to make you feel like a fighter pilot. The Temerario sticks with the same military vibe, but it’s all far more clean, with a lower dashboard and simplified controls, plus an 8.4-inch touchscreen running a much-improved software interface.

I actually can sit upright in a Temerario without my head being pressed against the ceiling, but it’s still not the most comfortable car. It is, of course, extremely low, so climbing in and out is a challenge if your knees or lower back are out of warranty.

The Temerario is a Lamborghini, through and through.

The Temerario is a Lamborghini, through and through.

The Temerario is also extremely loud, even when just sitting and idling, but that hybrid system helps out here. If you need to make a silent getaway, just toggle the car over to Città mode (Italian for “city”) and that V8 will stay deactivated. It’s a weird thrill to drive a car like this completely silently, even if you won’t get far.

There is one place, though, where I think the Temerario is an unfortunate downgrade from the outgoing Huracan, and that’s the look. I adore the pert, compact styling of the Huracan and the way its nose seems to dive straight into the asphalt. The Temerario, with its extra length, has less striking proportions, and there’s simply a lot more going on visually. It’s a bit busy, but I do love how utterly racy it looks just sitting still.

So, it’s perhaps not as pretty to look at, but that’s a minor complaint. The Temerario is a massive upgrade over the old Huracan, and a machine that, in spirit and in feel, very much honors and continues the Lamborghini lineage.

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