Alexandre
After a decade in the pantheon of supercars, with almost 20,000 units produced, the Lamborghini Huracán is preparing to pass the torch to its worthy heir. Scheduled for unveiling at the end of next year, the replacement for this iconic model will be on the road in 2025, with a big change on the engine side.
The new arrival at Lamborghini is distinguished by an evolution under the hood: goodbye to the characteristic V10 sound, and replaced by a V8 twin-turbo plug-in hybrid (PHEV)from the Volkswagen Group, promising even greater performance.
This V8 engine, already featured under the hood of the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid, delivers an output of 739 hp and 950 Nm of torque. Although the performance of the future Huracan is unknown, this engine is already expected to power the Urus at over 820 hp. In comparison, outperforms the Huracán's current 5.2-liter V10 by almost 200 hpa significant leap forward. And just to give an idea, the 2.6-tonne Porsche Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid is capable of leaping from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.7 s.
The switch to plug-in hybrids will have an impact on pricing. The new Huracán PHEV should cost well over €250,000which, while significant, is still less than the half-million requested for la Revueltothe brand's other new model, equipped with a new V12, also a PHEV.
Lamborghini and Ferrari have it all figured out
With its new V8 plug-in hybrid engine, and after thee V12 PHEV from the Revuelto, Lamborghini smartly renews its range high performance engines, remaining true to the brand's DNA, while at the same time in line with current ecological trends.
Ferrari had already shown the way with its 1000hp SF90 V8 PHEV, and the more recent 830hp 296 GTB and GTS V6 PHEV. In the end, these were two very high-performance models with very low penalties, around €3,000 in France, even with the 2024 scale...
Perhaps Stellantis should have invested in V6 PHEV powertrains for Maserati and Alfa Romeo rather than putting 1.5 billion into Leap Motors... and betting it all on 100 % electric models.
The last paragraph says it all: Stellantis with Alfa Romeo and Maserati should have invested in V6 PHEVs, rather than relying solely on the blandness of electric batteries, which buyers turn away from once they've had one. Wouldn't it be possible to borrow the hybrid V6 from the Ferrari 296 GTB?
I hear this Ferrari is great to drive, and the malus is minimal.
Stanislas
Not only is it great to drive, it's the ultimate in its class. There's nothing to stop you from buying the hybrid system and adapting it to each V6 (even installing it on the old Maserati V6 sold to Lancia), but Tavares is too cheap for that.
The noise of their v6 at 120 degrees is also exceptional.
Except that I can't see Ferrari giving up its V6 when they're still expecting so much from it, and it's also earned its GT3 credentials by winning at the Nurburgring this year, which is quite a feat in itself, and it's put Porsche and Audi into a rage!
Especially since they've made the 4-cylinder gme PHEV on some jeeps with 380 hp. with r&d it would have been interesting to graft it onto the 2.9/3.0 v6.
And on the old Maserati twin-turbo V6 present in the Ghibli in both petrol and diesel versions, as it was used to develop the system before the Ferrari V6 came out, Hence the fact that it could be the engine to be ceded to Lancia, so that each brand would have its own V6, leaving the 6-cylinder PHEV designed by FCA to be ceded to American brands such as Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler, which is the group's weakest brand (although it could use the platform of the Ghibli, Quattroporte 6 and Levante). With this V6, heavy-duty drivers could aim for Lancia, at a lower price than Maserati, with a high-performance, luxurious product but a range below Maserati. But as Tavares has said, if this costs in investment (buying the engine back from Ferrari), he doesn't want to hear about it.
This guy is a rat who looks more and more like Goshn!
That's the problem with cost killers, whether Ghosn or Tavares, they only see what's profitable by cutting costs. Hence the multiple versions of the same car simply rebadged according to the brand, with a slightly different look.
Peugeot e-2008, Jeep Avenger, Opel Mokka, Fiat 600e, soon the Alfa B-SUV, the same car with minor differences. Except that an Alfa Romeo buyer expects something other than yet another version of the same car with, worst of all, an identical engine that exists elsewhere.
But VAG does exactly the same with its brands. A few years ago, I visited the Volkswagen factory and museum in Wolfsburg. On the same production line, you could see Volkswagen and Seat. The snobs buy Audis, while those with less money buy the same cars with Skoda or Seat badges.
Stellantis does the same with its compact SUVs at the Tychy plant, just as the Tonale and Hornet come off the same production line (although they've gone to the trouble of offering different engines).
It's a fad launched by the 3 American groups, and businessmen are uneducated because if they learned history, they'd see that it's a fiasco and that it's led to their downfall. But no, we're repeating the same mistakes elsewhere.
Enzo Ferrari used to say that you don't make profits by cutting corners, but by investing in research and development, and we can see where his brand stands today... at the top of the automotive world.
You make Tavares look like the late Marchionne!
Marchionne has also made strategic mistakes, as we've seen in his failure to launch the Giulia as an estate car, even though this is the body style most sedans are sold in Europe, and in his massacre of Lancia.
Koeninseeg is another example. Or there's the Toyota/Subaru clone system with the GT-GR86/BRZ, the same car but with such different settings that you really get the impression of having 2 totally opposed cars in terms of driving, because one is made for the Toug and the other for the circuit.
But making clones with the same driving style, where only the bodywork and interior are changed, is a fiasco, and Americans have suffered the consequences.