Lamborghini Temerario review – does the Ferrari 296 fighter deliver or disappoint?
The Revuelto is Lamborghini’s first and the reigning evo Car of the Year winner. Can the Temerario live up to that standard?
The big question of the Lamborghini Temerario is whether it can emulate its big brother, the Revuelto, and deliver the same remarkably rounded, engaging and finessed driving experience. Our first drive yielded some doubts and now we've tried it on road to either confirm or assuage them. It’s fair to say the Huracán was less than perfect when it was launched in 2014. Still, there was no argument about the way it looked. Nor the way it sounded, thanks to its 5.2-litre V10, which always seemed to have a bit more fire in its belly than that of its milder-mannered four-ringed cousin from Böllinger Höfe.
As it matured, so the Huracán found its groove. By the time the Evo, STO and Tecnica were introduced it was amongst the finest and most evocative supercars money could buy. Finishing on such a high meant Lamborghini was faced with the toughest of acts to follow. Throw in increasingly restrictive environmental regulations, which mandated the new car would have to feature a degree of electrification, and the job of creating a suitably special replacement must have seemed almost insurmountable.
It’s long been the case that Lamborghini reserves the scissor-doored shock and awe for its V12 flagships. This remains the case with the Temerario, which keeps conventional doors as per Gallardo and Huracán. Seeing it in the metal for the first time, it’s a tidy design but from front three-quarters, a little plain, with hints of Ferrari 348 around the rear arch. The rear is more interesting, with its Revuelto-style exposed rear tyres, but even lined up in an array of wild colours for this media exercise, from orange to baby blue to purple, it feels like the visual drama has been dialled a fraction down after the Huracán.
As if to underline the point, the cars for our road drive were lined up in the paddock at Misano circuit on the Adriatic coast where the Lamborghini World Finals were taking place and floating on the air the off-beat wail of lightly silenced Huracán race cars pounding around the track. The Huracán casts a long shadow and leaves big shoes to fill.
Engine, gearbox and technical highlights
- Twin-turbo V8 revs to a heady 10,000rpm
- 907bhp positively eclipses rivals from McLaren and Ferrari
- Borrows Revuelto’s hybrid system
They’ve been busy, for the Temerario is new from nose to tail. A fresh look brings increased aero efficiency, while a new aluminium monocoque saves weight, increases rigidity and provides more occupant space. The blockbusting V8 is mated to a new eight-speed DCT gearbox and electric front axle, which features a pair of e-motors for trick torque vectoring.
There’s a third motor sandwiched between the engine and gearbox (the ’box, motors, battery and associated hybrid gubbins are all shared with the Revuelto). Mounting the new DCT transversely behind the V8 creates space in the central tunnel to package the lithium-ion battery pack.
Of limited capacity but quick to charge and discharge, the battery is recharged during regenerative braking via the front axle or directly from the V8. It can also be charged from an ordinary domestic supply in as little as 30 minutes, though EV-only range is limited to six miles. Just as significantly, there’s also a new philosophy around the Temerario’s chassis dynamics and driving character.
The Temerario’s 907bhp puts it within ten per cent of the 1001bhp Revuelto, and when you factor in a kerb weight about 80kg lighter, it’s closer still on power-to-weight: 545 versus 574bhp per ton.
The shape is clean, with clever use of airflow over, under and through areas of the bodywork to generate downforce (increased by more than 100 per cent at the rear compared with the Huracán), feed cooling air to where it’s needed and extract hot air from the radiators, brakes and engine bay.
There’s also an Alleggerita package, which saves weight and adds downforce (a further 55 per cent gain at the rear) via a suite of replacement carbon panels comprising front splitter, floor, side skirts, engine cover and a more pronounced rear ducktail. It also adds satin-finish interior carbonfibre trim and a pair of lightweight sports seats. Combined, these items save a little over 12.5kg. It’ll also lighten your wallet, to the tune of £37,200. A further 12.5kg can be saved by opting for carbonfibre wheels and a titanium exhaust.
Structurally the Temerario sticks with aluminium, finding significant improvements in weight efficiency and torsional rigidity (plus 20 per cent) over the previous-generation spaceframe thanks to new high-strength alloys, hydroformed extrusions and hollow castings. It’s also less complex, with a 50 per cent reduction in the number of components and 80 per cent less weld-bead length. It’s clever stuff.
Despite saving weight with the smarter next-gen alloy frame, at 1690kg without fluids the Temerario is 250kg heavier than the car it replaces. That’s a hefty penalty, but one mitigated by clever placement of the major masses and even smarter use of the twin motor front e-axle and the third motor, which joins forces with the V8 to drive the rear axle.
Like its big brother the Revuelto, pressing the big red button on the centre tunnel doesn’t so much start the Temerario up as switch it on, with the ICE component of the powertrain remaining silent until you switch from EV-only Citta through Strada (the mildest of the hybrid modes) to Sport.
Performance, ride and handling
- Powertrain is devastatingly effective…
- … if not emotionally resonant in the slightest
- The way it feels needs more calibration, particularly the steering
The roads around this part of Italy aren’t great, so it’s quite a while before we find one suitable for a decent slug of wide open throttle. There have been hints, glimpses of potential, but when the throttle finally goes to the stop and stays there, the Temerario shocks. A staggering burst of acceleration launches us up the road with ever-increasing intensity, and just to add to the thrill, when full boost hits, the back end overspeeds and steps a few degrees out of line, as if the car itself is surprised by how much torque it’s got – and that’s with traction control on. Gets the pulse racing, I can assure you, and we’re still a couple of thousand revs off the heady 10,000rpm limiter.
The magnitude of the Temerario’s all-out shove is similar to that of its big brother, the quite wonderful Revuelto, crowned evo Car of the Year 2025.
I had a certain expectation of how the engine might sound and it wasn’t like this. There’s no easy way to say this: at low revs the V8 sounds awful, emitting a clattery, tappety, indistinct soup of a noise that sounds more like a truck diesel than the engine of a supercar. Only when we’re out of town and can pick up some revs does the sound clean up, and even then all you get is a typical, flat-plane-crank V8 sound: a light, plain beat like that of an in-line four. This feels like a major error of judgement, not to say a massive downgrade after the warbling V10 of the Gallardo and Huracán.
> When a Lamborghini press launch turned into a 25 hour fever dream
Did it have to be this way? The all-new ‘L411’ 4-litre V8 is more compact than the old V10, but was it out of the question to design and accommodate a new V10? Lamborghini saw the value in creating a brand new V12 for the Revuelto and the V10 has been a cornerstone of small Lamborghinis for over two decades. Also, given the nostalgia for high-revving V10 F1 cars, who wouldn’t see the appeal of a road car with 10,000rpm 5.2-litre V10? But here we are.
At the very least, the V8 should sound better. Ferrari’s junior supercars have had flat-plane V8s for years and the engineers at Maranello have gone to great lengths to tease the best character out of them, particularly post-458 Italia when they got sound-dampening turbos. Seems like it wasn’t high on Lamborghini’s to‑do list, and it doesn’t help that one of the Temerario’s key rivals, the Ferrari 296 GTB, has a V6 bursting with character.
Other early impressions are that the steering is quite light, that the car feels alert and that the ride is very good. MagneRide dampers are standard and the car feels all of a piece, no doubt helped by the increased torsional rigidity of the new aluminium chassis, which is made from fewer parts and with fewer welds than was the case with the Huracán. Up in the hills there’s some quite lumpy asphalt and the Temerario rolls over even the worst of it with an impressive lack of fuss.
On smoother, faster sections, switching up to Sport or Corsa firms up the damping nicely, and for more challenging stuff there’s a Ferrari-style ‘bumpy road’ button. The car responds brightly to the steering but there’s not a lot of granular feedback. Maybe these regular Potenzas are still lacking a bit of heat. That’s certainly my feeling when I get the throttle into the carpet for the first time and the rears spin up mid-lunge.
The power delivery isn’t as you might expect. Other car-makers use the electrical performance to fill in for the turbos until they start blowing, creating a seamless handover, but that’s not how the Temerario is. Give the throttle a light squeeze to punch forward and you get an EV surge. Give it a longer push and that surge comes and goes and then you’re kind of waiting for the turbos to kick in… which they do, big-style. It leaves me wondering if there’s another step to peak power, to the stratospheric 10,000rpm red line. So far we’ve only hit about 7500rpm and I’m concerned that we might not find a suitable bit of road to allow us to experience the headline 10,000rpm.
It all feels habitable and easy to live with. The ride is excellent, the eight-speed DCT gearbox, shared with the Revuelto, is beautifully mannered mooching around and snappy and seamless on high-rev upshifts, while the standard carbon-ceramic brakes lack a little initial feel and bite but are plenty powerful enough. The standard seats are superb, too, and there's a bit of luggage space behind them to supplement a fairly decent frunk, even though the electrics are in there vying for space. In a lot of respects it’s a polished car.
We find a corner to scoot around a few times for the camera, a well-sighted, smooth, 180-degree loop with a mild gradient. I gradually pick up the pace, ramp up the drive mode from Strada to Sport and then Corsa and wind back the stability and traction control, but early on I can feel where it’s headed. There’s not as much bite at the front as you might expect, the nose feeling a bit soft. Getting onto the throttle sooner or letting it find the apex before gassing it, the result is mild understeer. This gets neutralised when the turbos start blowing but there’s a bit of body roll by this time so you’re a little wary of letting rear slip develop because there’s a roll correction when you back out.
I was expecting cleaner, more positive dynamics. Sure, it took a while for Lamborghini to get the best out of the Huracán and maybe the same will be true of the Temerario, but the hybrid V12 Revuelto was surely more of a challenge and that was clean and poised straight out of the box. With the same levers available to pull and a bit less mass, I was hoping for similar finesse in the Temerario.
I’m still anxious to scratch the 10,000rpm itch, feeling that I haven’t experienced the car in the full until I’ve seen all the shift lights lit and felt the power. The roads are so fiddly and rural it feels like it’s never going to happen, but then, out of the blue, we drop onto a flat, arrow-straight bit of road that bypasses a small town. It’s deserted. I nail it and, oh boy, the Temerario finds another level.
Through peak boost and out the other side, from around 7500rpm the V8 kicks hard for the limiter, revs piling on frenziedly, the push escalating with a ferocity that’s borderline terrifying. l grab an upshift just shy of 10k and instantly the revs are back in the zone, the acceleration seemingly just as intense. Another near-instantaneous upshift and still the Temerario forges on. In just a few seconds we’ve exhausted the straight and seen a seriously big number on the speedo before I hit the brakes. Wow. I’m stunned. That was incredible, the intensity of acceleration a match for the Revuelto.
My expectations of the Temerario were perhaps set high by the rightness and polish of its big brother. It feels like fixing the dynamics would be pretty easy; all the components are there, it’s just the tuning. Sure, leave headroom for sportier models such as a Performante or STO, but the stock Temerario needs to make a good first impression against brilliant rivals like the Ferrari 296 GTB and McLaren 750S. Meanwhile, topping their power outputs looks great on paper but feels like a technical victory.
I don’t really mind that the Temerario has three-stage performance – snap-throttle electric torque that gets things moving, then full-fat turbo boost that really gets the little Lambo shifting and, finally, when you can deploy it, the astonishing push for the 10k red line which feels like the crescendo of a highly strung, high-specific-output, naturally aspirated engine. It’s like three engines in one and I’m good with that. The major issue for me is the engine’s lack of aural character and charisma.
Making a turbocharged, flat-plane-crank V8 sound engaging is hard work and Lamborghini hasn’t put in the hard yards. It feels like in the pursuit of the heady red line, their engineers forgot – or perhaps even sacrificed – an engaging engine note.
On track – Richard Meaden
Tucked in the wake of an instructor-driven lead car with a little over 300kph (186mph) showing on the dash display, we plunge into the downhill braking zone for Estoril’s second-gear Turn 1. It’s serious speed in any car, let alone the new baby of Lamborghini’s supercar range.
Circuit driving isn’t intended to demonstrate refinement, but before we’ve exited the pitlane it’s obvious the Temerario has been developed and honed to be as approachable and user-friendly as possible. Literally anyone would feel happy driving it. As with big brother Revuelto, pressing the red button on the centre tunnel doesn’t so much start the Temerario up as switch it on, with the ICE component of the powertrain remaining silent until you switch from EV-only Citta through Strada (the mildest of the hybrid modes) to Sport.
Of course, the old V10 is a tough act to follow. Big capacity. Lots of cylinders. No turbos. And produced in an era when manufacturers had the freedom to give their supercars a proper voice. Lambo knew it had to do something extreme for its replacement, hence the wild 10,000rpm red line. It’s hard to imagine what was required to get an engine like this to pass VW Group’s notoriously tough durability tests. But pass it did.
It’s a curious engine. Its character and delivery are shaped partly by hybrid assistance and a fiendishly complex blend of turbo boost and battery shove for effortless flex and apparently limitless revs. Out on track it’s this mash-up of small-capacity screamer and big-capacity slugger (peak torque is 538lb ft) that wrong-foots you. Or at least forces you to really think about what it is that characterises the Temerario when you floor the throttle.
It has brilliant response. Not just when you make a sustained squeeze into the gas, but in those critical moments when you’re modulating the throttle; never fully on or fully off but working in the transient zone where you want the finest possible control and minimal latency so you can find the limit of traction and play with the balance of the car. That’s very hard to achieve in a turbocharged engine.
Clever boost management ensures it sustains peak power between 9000 and 9750rpm, so there’s no sense of tailing off. If you consider the engineering challenges Lamborghini had to overcome it’s hard not to be hugely impressed by the efficacy of this new turbocharged hybrid V8.
Without its hybrid-related components the new transversely-mounted eight-speed ’box is lighter than the Huracán’s seven-speed unit. It also delivers faster shifts, and in Corsa mode they’re clean and punchy. Not as clinical as a Porsche PDK’s but a little sharper-feeling than the Ferrari 296’s.
It’s clear Lamborghini has worked very hard to create a shift character that’s precise but with just enough feeling of inertia and torque push to give you a positive sense of completing the upshift. It’s minimal compared to the whiplash-inducing upshifts of Lambo’s old ASM single-clutch gearboxes, but it brings just enough character without feeling contrived.
Much like the Revuelto, the Temerario confounds the scales by behaving like a smaller and more wieldy car than the one it replaces. Though it is resolutely not a track-biased car, the way it performs around Estoril demonstrates the fundamental soundness of the set-up. Whether it’s on standard Bridgestone Potenza Sport tyres or stickier Potenza Race, it has a neutral to oversteer balance that feels precise but playful, nicely intuitive and naturally rear-wheel drive.
We complete our first laps in a regular example on Potenza Sports and the following two sessions in an Alleggerita on Potenza Race tyres. Both tyre options carry Lambo-specific ‘L’ marks denoting bespoke development. The Race tyre is interesting because Bridgestone and Lamborghini chose to yield a little in terms of outright one-lap performance compared to a Michelin Cup 2 R in favour of more consistent performance and reduced wear. We didn’t time our laps at Estoril, but they felt super-consistent from stint to stint across the day.
The brakes are immensely impressive, with a reassuringly firm and consistent pedal. That monster braking zone into Turn 1 never troubled them for outright stopping power and fade was non-existent. Just as impressive is the way you can modulate the braking pressure.There’s some very clever stuff going on with the calibration of the dynamic modes, especially when it comes to how the front torque vectoring and rear e-motor are used. In Corsa mode (with ESC on) the front axle is used earlier in the corner-exit phase to maximise stability and traction for the cleanest and quickest run onto the straight.
Knock it back to Sport and you immediately feel the Temerario become more playful, which requires more input in terms of countersteering and throttle applications. This is because the rear e-motor makes its contribution earlier in the corner and fractionally ahead of the front axle, so you get that extra rotational energy for maximum ‘fun-to-drive’, which from what I can gather is a de-Deutsche-ified replacement for ‘sportiv Faszination’. It is indeed a brave new world.
You can disable the ESC by switching to Corsa Plus mode, but sadly we didn’t get the opportunity to try this. However, we did have the chance to try the Drift Mode. I have to say that in general I’m not a fan of these big-slip-angle ESC modes because they never feel that natural. Instead they require you to suspend your instincts in favour of an admittedly sophisticated algorithm that takes readings from throttle, steering, yaw and speed sensors to predict your inputs.
The Temerario’s three-stage system is little different in this respect, though once you find the knack and drive by rote it does allow big, smoky slides. Indeed, it’ll let you spin if you’re too greedy on the power and/or too slow on the steering.
Stay within the limits of the system and it does a convincing job, but start to explore the outer reaches of its prescribed limits and you can feel the electronics quietly taking over. Initiate slides with more aggressive inputs and it’s less likely to play ball and will sometimes actively work against you. It’s a good training tool that opens up the opportunity of oversteer with varying degrees of safety for less experienced hands, but if you know what you’re doing you’ll prefer to go with ESC Off so you can truly feel – and trust – the car.
Its lightness of touch will divide opinion. Personally, I would like the steering to have more meat to it. Not for the sake of machismo – excessive control weights are dumb – but because it would add an appropriate level of physical effort and connection for what is an extremely potent supercar.
As it stands, the steering is too light and its feedback so finely filtered it’s all a bit too clean. Perhaps that’s inevitable when so much of the car relies on a forensic level of electronic calibration and system integration. It’s certainly hard to imagine how engineers might introduce a bit of analogue grit without it feeling horribly contrived, but that’s what it’s missing.
Interior and tech
- Temerario inherits controls, HMI and design language from the Revuelto
- Vastly roomier inside than the Huracán
- A good view out too
What you notice immediately upon swinging open the driver’s door is the new structure’s narrower sill and greater cabin space, with headroom increased by 34mm and legroom by 46mm. Despite the e-axle there’s sufficient space in the frunk to take two carry-on cases, with additional space behind the seats.
There are hints of Huracán in the shape of the air vents and in the cab-forward windscreen with its A-shaped side window treatment, but more is familiar from the Revuelto: the Temerario uses the same steering wheel, instrument pack, central screen and centre console. Same push-button door release too, which for a while today I will keep pressing and then trying to lift the door, forgetting that gullwing doors are reserved for the big Lambos.
It’s a stylish place to be, the chunky, bevel-edged door casings of our car trimmed in black Alcantara contrasted by sweeps of white leather. There’s lots of carbon on this car too, much of it optional, as is the Ferrari-style passenger-side instrument pack, so passengers can see just how many revs you’ve managed to use. It’s one of a huge list of options that make it worryingly easy to add another £100k to the £260k list price.
There’s a clean line of sight in the rear-view mirror of the stock version, with no fixed rear wing or even an active spoiler, all the aero work done by the underbody and upper surfaces. Such practicalities might sound at odds with Lambo’s hardcore image, but these cars are covering proper miles. Late-model Huracáns were driven around 5000 miles per annum on average and Lamborghini expects Temerario owners to exceed this, so useability is increasingly important.
Price, rivals and specs
Lamborghini knows as well as anyone that supercars are as much about visual and aural drama as they are about performance. It’s not going to be a stroll selling the Temerario to Huracán owners. Our initial track drive left questions of whether the lauded 10,000rpm red line would be largely redundant when there’s so much low and mid-range punch and so it turned out to be. It certainly isn’t alone in this regard: a 750S or 296 GTB are both madly fast, but as the McLaren is more feelsome and the Ferrari a little more soulful, if the Lambo’s hard-won USP is tricky to access on the road, chasing such an extreme and emotive red line could be seen as a trivial pursuit. Pointless, even, if you’re not going to take your Temerario on track.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am not in the market for a £300k supercar, but I’ve driven enough of them to know that the Temerario’s weakness is in being too polite. It’s almost as though it thinks it’s a next-gen Audi R8. Not in looks, but certainly in deeds. That’s not meant as an insult, but hopefully frames the marked shift in character compared with the gnarly old Huracán.
It certainly isn't cheap. At base the Temerario will cost £259,567 but that's before the £37,200 Alleggerita pack and before the £21k carbonfibre wheels. Most cars, with a splash of Ad Personam and a few choice options, won't reach customers for less than £300k.
| Engine | V8, 3995cc, twin-turbo, plus three 110kW e-motors |
|---|---|
| Power | 907bhp (combined) |
| Torque | 538lb ft (ICE only) @ 4000-7000rpm |
| Weight | 1690kg (dry) (545bhp/ton) |
| Tyres | Bridgestone Potenza Sport |
| 0-62mph | 2.7sec |
| Top speed | 213mph |
| Basic price | £259,567 |