While the Indian demand for mass market cars is declining, Lamborghini is not complaining
This job can be extremely satisfying at times. For example, the last Friday, I was invited by the Italian supercar manufacturer Lamborghini to drive the new Huracan EVO at the Madras Motor Racetrack. These are not the decisions you ponder over, you make a snap call. After all, even for an automobile journalist, opportunities to drive a 640 horsepower supercar around a racetrack are fleetingly few.
This was not the first time I drove a Lamborghini around this very racetrack. A few years ago, I drove the Huracan’s predecessor — the Gallardo — around a tight and twisty track, located opposite the Hyundai factory. The racetrack and its frequent races are major reasons that much of India’s racing talent on two and four wheels emerges out of Chennai. It is a technical track and unlike the Buddh International Circuit, it has a little margin for error. In some parts of the track, the barriers are just a few feet away, considering the Huracan Evo is a Rs 3.73 crore car and that the track was slippery thanks to an overnight shower, it was far more challenging than driving the Gallardo on a dry day and that car has 562 horsepower, 80 units less.
The Huracan Evo derives its 640 horsepower from the naturally-aspirated V8 engine. Yet the Huracan Evo is a remarkable car to drive around this track even with its wet patches, of which, one did honestly catch me out. First and foremost, I did not drive fast in this car. The short 3.7 kilometre track does not really have a very long straight track. However, driving fast in a vertical line is not the raison d'être of the Huracan but how well and fast this machine can go through a corner, even a tight one without difficulty. Think about it for a second — to carry a large amount of speed through a corner defies the laws of physics but through a combination of grip from the tyres and aerodynamic grip, the car changes direction with ease. In ‘Corsa,’ which is race mode, the computers and suspension will work overtime to ensure that you might even lose your lunch but the car will not lose grip unless you do something incredibly stupid.
But for some of us, the entire point of an exercise like this, driving on a closed racetrack, is to let the tail hang out a bit and for that, Lamborghini has the ‘Sport’ mode, where everything might be tuned to performance but does allow you to go a bit wide and maybe hang the tail out a bit. The wet track did make sliding a bit easier, but given that the MMRT has little margin for error you had to be a bit careful while pushing the Huracan Evo, but that did not mean that one did not have fun. I was enjoying myself immensely when I hit a wet patch and well, power does not always get you out of a mess and I had a 180-degree spin. But I wasn’t driving for time, just to have fun and nothing was harmed. Phew!
Thankfully, the most impressive thing in supercars like the Huracan is not the sheer acceleration but the braking. The Huracan’s brakes can bring it from 100 kilometers an hour to a standstill in 31 meters. For a regular car user such braking performance is unfathomable, in just over two seconds. The problem is that you measure supercars by how fast they go and how pretty they are, speed is not everything and the looks disguise the functions they fulfill. The Lamborghini Huracan Evo is worth every penny, yes it costs more than a pretty penny but it isn’t an excuse to make a music video, this car is a remarkable feat of engineering and it supremely good to drive and I had some great fun.
And Lamborghini India chief Sharad Agarwal is also a happy man, not just because we enjoyed the drive, but Lamborghini’s business in India is growing. This might seem strange given the general doldrums in the market, but Agarwal points to the fact that the Italian supercar maker launched the Huracan Evo in India first, sure it is just a variant of the car, but that is a huge vote of confidence by Lamborghini. In 2018, Lamborghini sold 48 cars in India, and when you consider that the cheapest Lamborghini’s are Rs 3.5 crore before you add any options, that is quite a few. And even this year as the bulk of the luxury car market declines by a third, Agarwal told me that he expects to sell at least 60 cars this year. “The fact is that we are constrained not by demand but by the allocation of cars that we get. The market for individuals who would buy a Huracan Evo is very limited, but they always have money put aside for vehicles like these.” Of course, Lamborghini has been aided by its Urus, their idea of a Sports-Utility Vehicle (SUV) but their sales figures are impressive, though given products like the Huracan Evo hardly surprising.
