Classic road trip: storm chasing in a Lamborghini Huracan

Nobody manufactures inappropriate hysteria quite like American TV news, and as we landed in Phoenix, Arizona, the local stations were filled with gamely hysterical bulletins and frenzied on-the-spot reporting of an "extreme weather event" during the previous night. Men and women with glow-in-the-dark teeth expounded breathlessly on light property damage and inch-deep flash floods, one perma-tan news evangelist hunched mournfully in the lee of a small, forlorn suburb of toppled motorhomes. Not far away, no fewer than 16 people were struck by lightning, including a golfer whose ambition to birdie the 15th hole overcame his aversion to waving a metal stick around during an electrical storm. The news described him as "shocked but alive", apparently without irony.

Pictures: Justin Leighton

This feature was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Top Gear magazine

In a place called Mesa, another reporter interviewed a pet owner with a face like an untidy bagel, earnestly explaining how the woman's small dog was "extremely agitated" by the storm. Unfortunately, there was no shocking denouement to this tale of canine distress, merely a picture of a giddily confused Chihuahua. And so it went. Yes, a serious thunderstorm had come to Paradise Valley, but you'd think a vengeful god had decided to smite the area with a Playskool apocalypse. Amusing, but what makes the shocked-face hyperbole even more surprising is that Arizona is actually used to this. Every July, the south-western US comes under attack from the North American Monsoon, when an area of high pressure called the subtropical ridge - pushed up from a mythical-sounding somewhere called the Sierra Madre Occidental - develops in the upper atmosphere and combines with super-heated ground temperatures to make the sky turn black and spit electricity. It's famous for it.

It's also the reason we're here.

This is an... unusual requirement. As these things usually go, macrobursts featuring a high chance of cloud-to-ground lightning, hail, heavy rain, gale-force winds, gustnadoes - yes, they are an actual meteo... meter... weather thing - and supercell-driven tornadoes would be quite far down the ideal agenda for conditions in which to drive a car. Especially when the car is a very expensive, powerful Italian exotic. And yet, this is exactly what we're after. The car we're here for is the new Lamborghini Huracán. A vehicle named after a particularly nasty weather event. We're going storm chasing. Using an eponymous car as bait.

It makes sense, of a sort. Lamborghini is famous for its four-wheel-drive systems, and the new Huracán has been pitched as the most approachable small Lambo ever. Of course, the Huracán replaces the ageing Gallardo, whose final days encompassed so many increasingly hardcore limited editions that the only true rarity amongst the ranks of late-model small Lamborghini would be a standard one. And although it retains the basic profile, all-wheel drive and a derivative of the naturally aspirated 5.2-litre V10, the Huracán is respectably new. With bits thoughtfully pillaged from the current and forthcoming Audi R8, the Huracán features a new, stiffer chassis that's a hybrid of carbon fibre and aluminium, a new interior, a fresh suite of electronics, better traction control and four-wheel-drive management, magnetorheological adaptive damping, and - at last - a proper seven-speed double-clutch gearbox called LDF, or slightly more romantically, Lamborghini Doppia Frizione. This is a more modern Lambo. A more approachable entry point.

Currently, it's glinting out in the sunshine, and although it's not as aggressive as big-brother Aventador, this is the ‘base' of the Lamborghini range, and as far as a £180k base goes, it's probably the prettiest car the company makes. Short overhangs, plump haunches and the kind of convincingly mid-engined proportions that make fans of fast things take notice. Also, given that the last few Gallardos we saw sprouted ever larger wings and aerodynamic trickery, it's satisfying to come across a clean and crisp Lamborghini shape - especially at the back, where the slatted rear engine cover and black centre section make this Huracán's bottom look like a Bauhaus distillation of Lamborghini styling quirks. It fires up with an unmistakeable flare of revs from the V10, snicks first gear with uncommon ease, and we slide out into lumbering, SUV-heavy Scottsdale traffic like a bright sliver of pure theatre.

Unfortunately, there is a snag. The previous evening's storm has proved cathartic for the area's pent-up meteorological aggression, and somewhat burst the high-pressure bubble. What the bright, impossibly bouncy local weather girls call a "break". And although as we track out and away from central Phoenix we see local hordes bolting roofs back onto outbuildings and men chopping lightning-felled trees into manageable chunks, the sky is a cheerful azure, the sun a hefty solar strike to the top of your head. Just walking around is like being beaten with a hot duvet. The temperature has already crested 38 degrees. It's 10am.

We head out into the desert, searching out the big mesas for the simple reason that storms often have a love affair with mountain views. Our eyes are on the skies, hunting among the Simpsons-esque fluff for cumulonimbus incus, or anvil clouds. These distinctive flat-bottomed clouds are stabilised phenomena in the upper atmosphere that are our best chance of supercells - the empyrean birth mothers of big T-storms. We spot a likely area on the map, check the lightning-network information, point the Huracán down the freeway and flatten the throttle.

Three things immediately come to light. One: the Huracán rides better than any Lamborghini before it; two: the DSG gearbox is a revelation; and three: it's still bloody quick, hitting 124mph from rest in under 10 seconds, 62 in just 3.2. And yet in Strada - selected from the wheel-mounted Anime switch - the Huracán has a lightness of touch across cratered surfaces that defies the usual tenets of the Sant'Agata bible. It also changes gear with the now-familiar instant flick of a double-clutch - something we've never had in a Lamborghini before - selects reverse from the large panic handle on the centre console instantly and creeps through traffic with ease.

There's greater vision, although the plastic venetian blind over the back window carves the rearward view into a series of letterboxes (a glass cover is an option) - the variably racked electro-mechanical steering is light but accurate and when you deploy the full 602bhp (the 610 designation refers to the engine's output in PS), the Huracán launches forwards without wheelspin, even when 75 per cent of the car's 413lb ft is available from just 1,000rpm. It's a really very easy car to drive, no harder than a Porsche 911 Turbo, though with a few more sticky-out bits. In fact, it's the most genial Lamborghini I've ever driven: a decidedly easy-to-handle supercar.

It's also fairly adept at simple cruising. The engine's gruff bark subsides into a seventh-gear thrum when you're just dawdling, and fuel efficiency soars - especially in the US where anything over about 65mph is seen as Millennium Falcon velocity. The aircon - thankfully - is perfectly chilly; the radio is capable. Even the basic seats are good for ergonomics and distance comfort. So some of the plastics are a little less plush than you might expect, but on first impressions, this is the first time I've ever thought of a Lambo as a potential daily-driver. But there are more important things to consider than how well the DAB works. We can see ominous clouds in the distance, and drive. There's a storm to chase, and we have to get there before it moves.

This is where the frustration starts to build. Every time we spot a likely cloud formation and can see rain on the horizon, the bigger highways seem to loop away from the bad weather like they're allergic. Actually, they simply seek the path of least resistance through the mesas and don't head to the precipices where the clouds like to hang out and... uh... precipitate. Thus, we must get inventive and use some roads less travelled. We consult the maps and head off on smaller, loopier carriageways into the backcountry and find the anathema to freeway straightforwardness. We find very, very curly roads.

Roads that dip and arc around big rocks and small mountains like a black tar lasso. The surfacing is bad, the speed limits ridiculously low. But traffic is light, and the Huracán sure-footed. Yes, Corsa mode, in which throttle, damping and ESC response are all in their most aggressive approaches, is a bit frantic, but settle the car into Sport, and the littlest Lamborghini still grips and goes like its looks suggest it might. The transmission will vary application from a standard 30/70 front/rear split to 100 per cent rear-wheel drive or 50/50 front-to-back, and as long as you keep the throttle on, the Huracán really will help you sort out any inconsistencies in your driving style. Or sections of stray sand on apices. Ahem.

The front will wash wide, the steering is gluey and a bit odd when going fast, and there feels like there's a lot of headroom for future faster versions, but on the right bit of road, this thing can really move. It feels light, confident and slick. More grown-up than before, in the right ways. And then, just as we see incus within striking distance, the road ends. Or rather it doesn't, but the tarmac peters out into kidney-battering, washboarded dirt. Undeterred, I decide that the Huracán is AWD and has a nose lift. Which means that it's basically a vertically challenged Range Rover, right?

Right?

Within an hour, I'm "helping the police with their enquiries". In this case, the enquiry being something along the lines of "How the hell did you get that here?" followed relatively closely by "Why?" We'd driven down Fish Creek, a place whose name couldn't have been any less appropriate, down, through, along and up the side of a mesa, on broken-down dirt roads whose battered, much-patched and inadequate crash barriers told a rambling tale of close encounters with fresh air and deathy tumbles. Policeman Tony* (*his name wasn't Tony - it was Steve) can't believe we're here, though accepts my somewhat sketchy explanation that 5mph faster than the posted 25mph speed limit helps smooth out the washboards in the road if you happen to be on a dirt track in a Lamborghini. We discuss clouds and storms, and get pointed northwards as the sun dips. We're getting close. Another couple of hours, and we are virtually in the storm's embrace. The air is heavy, and breezy, and smells slightly of ozone and iron. The road is still damp from recent rain. The immediate horizon is scarred with a slash of dense black cloud, and we've seen lightning strikes fluorescing in the gloom. The Huracán is about to meet an American cousin.

Again, it never happens. As soon as we get close, the clouds dissipate and literally evaporate. It's tremendously frustrating. But the Huracán, fast as it is, can't actually catch the wind. And I can't drive any faster without really annoying the Sheriff and possibly lobbing a Lamborghini down a cliff. The Huracán's traction control is gently discouraging of silliness, and even though there's less intervention in Corsa, push too hard and it will gently ease the throttle away from you, allowing the four-wheel drive to tidy up like a fussy mother. It would be dangerous to completely disengage it, which, of course, I immediately do, where I find, on a very lonely and private back road, that the Huracán is one of those cars that looks after you, even when the electronic minders are imprisoned behind the safety fencing. It's progressive, understeering initially, and then bringing the tail around if you keep on the throttle. A bit more angle and keep the throttle steady, and the all-wheel drive will pull you straight. Remarkably unintimidating. Although somewhat spectacular on dusty roads with yawning edges stiffened by 20-foot-high saguaro cactus. Things become increasingly interesting, until I remember where I am and what I'm doing, at which point I suddenly break out in a cold sweat, whinny like a tiny pony and switch everything back on again. We retreat. There are no storms to be had today.

Next day, and the temperatures are rising. We sweep out east through the state, forlornly chasing cloud cover. We drive through Miami (Arizona - foremost of the copper towns, apparently), then Globe and run towards the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The roads are spectacular: huge and flowing, they dispense the longest radii I've ever experienced, allowing you to feel the Huracán shuffling torque around like a traction butler, tempting you ever faster. It's not a car, or a road, that lends itself to delayed gratification. And there aren't that many people up here either, the big freeways offering a more concise journey time point-to-point. The Huracán bounces soulful vocals off the rock faces, clearly in its element up near its 8,500rpm red line, and although I'm having a whale of a time, the sun beats down with epic relentlessness.

By 4pm, the ambient temperature is 48°C, which, to a pasty Englishman, feels like human barbeque. There are still no storms.

A third day, and I've been communing with the weather channel deities once again, divining from their signs and sigils and weirdly coiffed hair that a huge ridge of high pressure is forcing its way up from Mexico, bringing with it spectacular lightning displays. The timings are not fortuitous: it's not going to be here until we're due to leave. But we hunt the clouds even so, running through more dirt roads, drifting a pure white Lamborghini Huracán around baked dirt roads at relatively tiny speeds, creating our own dustnadoes that spiral and wind around the car as if they're alive, pulled and drawn into existence by the vortices created from both driven axles. It's like living in a slow-motion storm of our very own. But, as we spend another ten hours chasing fluffy clouds like demented poets, it becomes clear that we're not going to be in a position to face a Huracán with a monsoon. We retreat, giving up the search, defeated by the lack of obnoxious weather. We have failed, in a most satisfactory manner. We have also learned that Lamborghini has made a new kind of car for the company - a more grown-up, mature Lamborghini, but one that still has enough bite to satisfy. A model heavy with potential.

As the plane takes off, the night sky is scored by multiple lightning strikes like enormous upside-down fireworks. The storm has arrived, just in time for us to leave. But it doesn't matter. If you need a little elemental excitement in your life, then Lamborghini makes its own extreme weather event, something powerful, exciting and inexorable. It's called the Huracán.