THIS WEIRD MATCH-UP OF A LAMBORGHINI STERRATO AND A PORSCHE GT3 RS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE - BUT IT'S STILL WORTH A WATCH.
Lamborghini recently revealed the new Huracán Sterrato, which is basically a Huracán that’s been modded and tweaked in all the right places so that it's at home off the beaten path. It’s an interesting-looking thing, we’re used to seeing this body shape hugging the floor, so raised up on all-terrain tyres with extra body cladding is just cool. To make it even cooler, the thing still makes use of Lamborghini’s legendary 5.2-litre V10 and that means it has a power output of 449 kW with a torque rating of 560 Nm. All good and well then, except for the fact that Lamborghini already makes a car perfectly suited to the task, the Urus. In Performante-spec, the Italian SUV features a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 with 490 kW of power and 850 Nm of torque. Truly does boggle the mind, but a company like Lamborghini wouldn’t create a beast like the Sterrato if there wasn’t a defined market for it. Porsche also dipped its toes in the weird off-road supercars segment when it launched the 911 Dakar which’s powered by the firm’s trusted twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre 6-cylinder powerplant tuned to produce 353 kW and 570 Nm of torque, which can propel the Dakar to 100 km/h in as little as 3.4 seconds on gravel and a 240 km/h top speed. With a set of cars like this, it makes sense that the Carwow crew would have pitted them up against each other to see the outcome. It was interesting to see, but we needed to see the same testing done over the same distances, but on gravel roads. Well, the absolutely bonkers Sterrato ended up back in the hands of Mat Watson and the Carwow crew set up another interesting drag race, but this time around the raised and cladded Lamborghini was pitted against one of the coolest Porsches on the planet and the very same car we’ll buy first when we win the Euro lotto - the Porsche GT3 RS.
The Porsche GT3 RS is the halo car for many Porsche fanatics, well for those that favour high-revving normally-aspirated things over boost. It’s the pinnacle of perfection and in the non-boosted powerplant stakes, it makes amazing power while providing one of the best soundtracks you can get from a factory car. The GT3 RS is powered by a 6-cylinder in Porsche’s usual flat/boxer configuration with a sizeable 4.0-litre capacity that’s rated to produce a whopping 386 kW with 465 Nm of torque. With power sent to the rear wheels and the car driven in anger, the GT3 is capable of a claimed 0-100 km/h time of just 3.2 seconds, and if you keep your right foot flat and have enough money to buy Metro a year’s worth of KFC, it can run on to a top speed of 296 km/h in rather rapid fashion - a decent bit quicker than the aforementioned Dakar. The GT3 RS is not quite the right car to pit against the Sterrato because the cars are meant to play in different playgrounds, but it does make for interesting viewing which is all we want. The off-road Lambo has 63 kW more in the power stakes and 95 Nm more in the torque department, which is a good start. It’s also heavier than the Porsche, but only by 20 kg with a weight of 1,470 kg. Will that small difference in weight make a difference in real-world driving, well real-world driving on a closed-off airstrip in a heads-up drag race? It will likely come down to driver skill (and weight) as well as the effectiveness of the Lambo’s 7-speed dual-clutch transmission versus Porsche’s lightning-fast 7-speed PDK transmission. Either way, the Porsche is and always be the winner.
Take a look at the YouTube video that sees Porsche's best normally-aspirated street car for the racetrack pitted up against the weirdest off-road Lamborghini that the world didn't really need because the Urus already exists: Lambo Huracan v Porsche 911 GT3 RS: DRAG RACE | carwow
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