Lamborghini Huracán Spyder across Miami

When it comes to stopping traffic, Lamborghinis are usually pretty effective. But, in Miami, the challenges to the car world’s lairiest brand come thick and fast. Or, in this case, slow. Slow to the point of stubborn immobility.

We’re on the 913 south past Hobie Island en route to Key Biscayne, when a woman in a bikini halts our detour through an obscenely picturesque coastal car park. “No!” she screams, while waving her arms frantically. “Nooooo! Stop! There’s an iguana on the road!”

There’s an iguana on the road. I’ve been doing this job almost 23 years, but this is the first time an iguana has stopped a road test. He’s a big fella, too, a good three or four foot long, tail included, luminously green, and clearly not for turning. Subsequent research confirms that iguanas are herbivorous, but as we inch closer to take pictures of him eyeballing our orange Huracán Spyder (“arancio borealis” in Lambo speak, Ferruccio’s favourite colour), we’re naturally keen not to upset him. It doesn’t work. What I can now tell you is that a grumpy iguana will signal his discontent by giving his tail a whiplash flick at your foot, should you try to shoo him off the road.

This feature was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

Photography: Webb Bland

Less than 20 minutes later, more wildlife. Deep in a steamy national park, we watch a raccoon rummage around in a bin – America has much cuter vermin than we do – and a flock of birds puts me in mind of the credit sequence of Miami Vice, the definitive Eighties television show – MTV Cops, as it was pitched to the network – that still casts a gigantic subcultural shadow over this restlessly, endlessly regenerating city. Crockett and Tubbs had a white Ferrari Testarossa and a black Daytona Spider (actually a Ford-based replica), but a reboot could do worse than feature a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder. The only problem is that the Huracán is so well sorted that you can discount power oversteer from any car chase theatrics: it just won’t do it.

Well, I say “well sorted”. That could be a euphemism for “boring”, but only if you’re the sort of purist who could possibly be left unmoved by 602bhp and 5.2 litres of normally aspirated V10 revving like a gathering storm to 8,250rpm. It’s the same unit that’s recently turned up in Audi’s thrilling second-gen R8, the car that provokes thoughts of internecine warfare as the Lamborghini bloodline is now so thoroughly polluted by Audi DNA. If the Huracán is officially the least naughty Lambo and the R8 is the snarliest Audi, don’t they meet in the middle somewhere? Or even cancel each other out? Internet chatter certainly suggests that the Huracán has a partial image problem, and even with the rear-drive 580-2 newly launched to redress the balance, there’s a suspicion that this latter-day Lambo is somehow defenestrated.

Lamborghini’s three-layered soft-top roof is available in black, brown or red, and plops out of view in 17 seconds at speeds up to 31mph. With that done, this really is an amazing-looking thing, perfectly preserving the surface nuances and shape of the coupe. During the opening process, movable fins gyrate into view on either side, and when they’ve disappeared, the black seatback area flows into the rear of the car with nicely judged visual flamboyance. There’s a duct integrated into the car’s form to channel turbulent air away from the cabin, and Lamborghini claims this makes conversation possible between occupants, even at high speeds.

Not around here, it doesn’t. Not unless you want the dialogue to include a third party, one who has just clambered off a large motorbike and is threatening you with a spell in a penitentiary alongside Big Bubba and the boys.

Should your right foot accidentally tread on the throttle pedal, the Huracán Spyder does a grand job of disguising the extra 120kg – roughly the weight of a doughnut-loving highway patrolman – bequeathed to it by the addition of pop-up rollover hoops, the roof mechanism and other reinforcement. It’ll do 62mph in 3.4 seconds (two tenths slower than the coupe), 124 in 10.2 and breaks the never-more-theoretical 200mph barrier by one mph.

So it’s fast. But then so are its key rivals. Faster, in fact: the McLaren, in particular, has brain-mangling intergalactic mid-range surge. Where the Huracán Spyder differs isn’t in what it does, but how it goes about it. Namely, by ingesting air as God intended, one of the last to survive as pretty much everybody switches to turbocharging. So while the Ferrari and McLaren’s handling spectrum and chassis interactivity is more colourful than the Lamborghini’s, neither of them sounds as good – especially with the roof lowered. Here in Miami – or Monaco or Mayfair, for that matter – you’ve got to ask yourself, what matters more?

This is an amazingly energetic city. If your cultural satnav’s co-ordinates are stuck on Scarface or those pastel-suited Eighties cops, then you’re missing Miami’s recent art-based renaissance. Not only have the South Beach area’s glorious art deco hotels and buildings been restored, but the annual Art Basel fair has helped breathe new life into districts that were previously dilapidated. Although urban renewal or gentrification isn’t universally popular, you can’t not love the way some of the world’s best street artists have revitalised the Wynwood area. The heart of it lies in Wynwood Walls, a project dreamt up by property developer Tony Goldman as a way of repurposing sprawling and often derelict spaces.

“Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place,” he claimed. “I was able to expose the public to something they had only seen peripherally.” Since 2009, Wynwood Walls has featured the work of more than 50 artists from 16 countries working on 80,000sq ft of walls. For blocks around, it’s the same story: Bansky and his colonial cousins on lysergic overdrive.

Which is more than can be said for Team TG in the Lamborghini given the stringent speed limits. Never mind. Having racked up close to 500 miles in one hit across southern Spain a while back, I know what the Huracán is all about: monumental grip from a chassis whose all-wheel drive, despite constantly juggling power front-to-rear, definitely prefers lily-livered under- to fire-in-your-belly oversteer, seamlessly smooth shifts from the doppia frizione seven-speed dual-clutch ’box, and a shockingly fluid ride with or without the magnetorheological dampers. It’s a truly everyday proposition, assuming you’re an everyday multi-millionaire, and there’s precious little sign of any post-decapitation chassis wobbles. (There shouldn’t be: Lamborghini claims that the part aluminium/part carbon-fibre chassis is 40 per cent stiffer than the Gallardo Spyder’s.) It even features cylinder deactivation for cleaner living. And it’s always fun flicking between the Strada, Sport and Corsa settings on the steering wheel.

Our car, thankfully, does without the optional dynamic steering, so there’s plenty of natural feel and linearity here. But there are glitches. Something always seems to fall off the Lambos I try, and this time it’s the plastic trim on the edge of the pop-out doorhandle. It clips back on easily enough, but it shouldn’t have unclipped itself in the first place. Then there’s the curious case of the aircon system, which gets sweatier than the car’s occupants (no mean feat: it’s in the low nineties today – in early February). By the time we’re heading for tonight’s photographic location, the magnificent Herzog & de Meuron-designed car park at 1111 Lincoln Road, there’s a puddle of condensation on top of both central air vents. Clearly that’s where all the effort has been going; precious little cool air has been coming out, whatever is emerging dissipating like a damp squib somewhere over the centre console. The Huracán’s instrument set-up might be dominated by the brilliant multi-configurable 12.3in TFT display, but anyone taller than six foot will struggle to get truly comfortable in here. Italian sports cars, eh?

Our car, thankfully, does without the optional dynamic steering, so there’s plenty of natural feel and linearity here. But there are glitches. Something always seems to fall off the Lambos I try, and this time it’s the plastic trim on the edge of the pop-out door handle. It clips back on easily enough, but it shouldn’t have unclipped itself in the first place. Then there’s the curious case of the aircon system, which gets sweatier than the car’s occupants (no mean feat: it’s in the low nineties today – in early February). By the time we’re heading for tonight’s photographic location, the magnificent Herzog & de Meuron-designed car park at 1111 Lincoln Road, there’s a puddle of condensation on top of both central air vents. Clearly that’s where all the effort has been going; precious little cool air has been coming out, whatever is emerging dissipating like a damp squib somewhere over the centre console. The Huracán’s instrument set-up might be dominated by the brilliant multi-configurable 12.3in TFT display, but anyone taller than six foot will struggle to get truly comfortable in here. Italian sports cars, eh?

Parked up on the seventh floor, the city’s lights twinkling into abstraction as far as the eye can see, the Huracán Spyder is still far too compelling to be derailed by user-interface glitches. There’s a Bugatti Veyron parked on level one, and the building’s owner, Robert Wennett, lives in the penthouse above us. The Lambo fits the space perfectly. “Jacques Herzog called this a building that’s all muscle, without clothes – like Miami Beach, with everyone walking around with muscle bodies” Wennett told Vanity Fair. “He also described it as the most radical thing they’ve ever done.” Not bad, given that this Pritzker Prize-winning partnership also has the Tate Modern in London and Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium on its CV.

The Huracán Spyder certainly isn’t Lamborghini’s most radical creation – nor is it meant to be. But, like the building it’s currently parked in, it gets the balance between function and entertainment about right. This isn’t a car so much as a lifestyle accoutrement, and in terms of fitness for purpose, it’s bang on. As the regulars in the W hotel bar will attest.