First drive: the new Lamborghini Huracán Spyder

What’s that?

The new Lamborghini Huracán Spyder. And if you could choose one last noise to ever hear, at least until tinnitus subsides, you’d probably choose an al fresco 5.2-litre, naturally aspirated V10, wouldn’t you?

Agreed. So is noise the best thing about the new roofless Huracan?

In a word, yes. That’s not to say this is a one-trick bull/pony, but if there’s any supercar that’d tempt you to shell out the thick end of two hundred grand just to hear it sing that bit more intimately, it’d be one of the last hi-revving, non-turbo exotics around, now sans-roof.

Tell me more about The Noise.

The great thing about having a V10 on board is that it sounds interesting all of the time. Unlike a flat-plane V8, it doesn’t blare or drone at low speeds. It’s always chattering away to itself and generally being musical. Deep-bodied and flatulent at low revs or on the overrun, baleful in the mid-range and bloody frenetic at the 8,250rpm power peak. And unlike some of the turbo set, you don’t actually need to ping it off the redline to feel a bit special.

Oh yes I do.

Fine, if you say so. In which case you’ll go very, very quickly indeed. This might be the softy’s poseur Lambo – and a chunky 120kg chunkier than its hard-top sister – but performance is still more than adequate for land-based transport.

This is the part where you tell me the numbers.

Launch control at the ready, the Spyder will do 0-62mph in a claimed 3.4 seconds (two tenths slower than the coupe), and 0-124mph in 10.2sec. And as prescribed in the supercar commandments, it will do over 200mph. 201mph, in fact.

Bear in mind that like most VW Group cars this side of Bugatti’s output, it’s a fair shout that the Huracan’s acceleration stats hold a tad in reserve. The coupes beat the stopwatch to three seconds…

I’m still getting over that weight figure. Where has that come from, and do you feel it?

The roof itself, weirdly, but the Huracán’s mostly got away with it. Lambo’s engineers say a soft-top was preferred as the car looks like the roof comes off, even when it’s up. Do you follow? As in, the folding hard-top McLaren and Ferraris don’t look special enough when the roof isn’t stowed; they try to ape the coupe. Lambo is very keen its drop-top is proud of being a soft top, but the mechanism for the roof, extending buttresses and rollover supports has added 105kg of the 120kg weight gain. Ouch.

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But it doesn’t flop about like an eel, right?

Indeed, the Huracán is, according to Sant’Agata’s maths, 40 per cent stiffer than the old Gallardo Spyder. Not sure how they test that – maybe they tie two cars to a tow rope, start them off in opposite directions, and see which bananas first.

The upshot is that you can thwack it into a pothole, the windscreen stays attached, and the rear-view mirror doesn’t shudder. Acceleration does feel over-so-slightly blunted though – it doesn’t quite have that up-on-tiptoes slingshot getaway the coupe masters.