cars news 10: Lamborghini’s R-and-D Boss Maurizio Reggiani on a Hybrid Urus, RWD Huracan

I was a bit confounded when reviewing the specs of the new rear-drive Lamborghini Huracan LP 580-2. It’s a lighter, rear-wheel-drive Huracan, leading me to believe it’d be a track star. But at the same time, Lamborghini took away power, and didn’t bother adding a manual transmission. So what’s going on here? To try and wrap my head around the new Lamborghini Huracan LP 580-2 – a car I hope to make MT Lambo Mk2 – and to find out about Lamborghini’s future projects, I caught up with Lamborghini chief of research and development Maurizio Reggiani at the 2015 Los Angeles Auto Show.

Reggiani says the sole purpose of the Huracan LP 580-2 is to be a fun-to-drive entry-level Lamborghini. “It’s a car engineered to be a fun-to-drive car,” Reggiani said, “Fun-to-drive in the sense that people new to Lamborghini get a fantastic introduction to the brand.” Opting for rear-wheel drive versus the standard all-wheel-drive Huracan achieves this goal on many fronts. For starters, removing the front driveshaft and its associated hardware sheds about 73 pounds according to Lamborghini. It also lightens up the Huracan’s steering rack, slightly improves weight distribution, and makes the car a drift machine.

“With this car if you try to drift it is so much fun,” he said. “I really like the control, the drifting, and if you have someone sitting next to you they will think, ‘Wow, he is a very good driver.’”

Although many enthusiasts still prefer manual transmissions over automatics like Lamborghini’s seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox, the Huracan LP 580-2’s position as the entry-level Lambo made the development of a modern manual transmission unfeasible. “From an engineering point of view it isn’t as simple as putting a cable between a shift lever and a gearbox,” he said. “You must develop and engineer a completely different kind of gearbox which means you are obliged to invest in the project.” Reggiani also suspects that Huracan LP 580-2 buyers wouldn’t be interested in driving the car every day, since a clutch that could handle the V-10’s power would likely require 35 pounds of pressure to actuate.

Despite claims that a rear-drive Huracan can’t handle the 602-hp Lamborghini’s 5.2-liter V-10 produces in all-wheel-drive Huracans, Reggiani indirectly revealed the real reason the rear-drive model only makes 571 hp: fuel economy. “The car is perfectly balanced for the 571 hp,” he said. “In order to [maximize the rear-drive drivetrain] this is the perfect number. It also allows us to reduce the fuel consumption.” Fuel economy numbers for the Huracan LP 580-2 have yet to be released, but given its power output, cylinder deactivation capabilities, and slightly lower weight, it shouldn’t be hard to improve on the all-wheel-drive car’s 16.2/20.0/17.7 city/highway/combined Real MPG rating.

On the topic of fuel economy, our discussion turned to hybrid supercars. To Reggiani, the weight penalty of a hybrid system far outweighs the fuel economy and performance benefits.

“Hybrid for me really is still far away, because weight is the most important [physical] input we can have in a car, and if we add a hybrid the weight of the battery and the package is really unbelievable,” he said. Reggiani believes a Lamborghini hybrid must be a GT car like the Asterion concept hybrid technology demonstrator, or an SUV, not a super sports car. “We did the Asterion to prove that we are able to do a hybrid, but if we do [a hybrid] it’s for cruising and not for handling,” Reggiani said. “[With a hybrid you are] obliged to put [a 400-pound battery] on top of the car, and that weight is against agility, handling, acceleration, and braking, meaning you cannot make it a super sports car. You can only be a loser.”

With that in mind, it’s looking more likely that the Lamborghini Urus crossover will be the storied Italian marque’s first-ever production hybrid. “I think that for Lamborghini, the Urus project can be the first project where we experiment with a hybrid solution,” he said. Weight isn’t as much of an issue in a big SUV designed for cruising the streets and highways instead of track work, Reggiani said. The Urus project, Reggiani assured me, is on track with production targeted for 2018. “We’re working on design, engineering, and everything in order to meet this plan and to be able to do something that will be much better than what we’ve seen in the concept at the Beijing Motor Show.”