2026 Lamborghini Temerario First Drive Review

Static photos by Matt Bubbers. Action shots courtesy of Lamborghini.

Not even Lamborghini could outrun the electric future.

The House of the Raging Bull held out on making hybrids longer than its rivals Ferrari and McLaren, but time is up. With the arrival of the 2026 Lamborghini Temerario, replacement to the beloved Huracán, Lamborghini’s hybrid lineup is now complete.

Looking out at a fleet of candy-coloured Temerarios, heat haze rising off their engines after a few fast laps of Portugal’s Estoril racetrack, I’m wondering why Lamborghini ditched the Huracán’s V10 in favour of an all-new twin-turbocharged V8 with a battery pack and a trio of electric motors. Couldn’t it have been lighter? Simpler? More pure? Less expensive?

Starting at $432,490 in Canada, the 2026 Temerario is roughly 30 per cent more expensive than the old Huracán Evo — not to mention the Ferrari 296 — and sure to give even well-heeled buyers some sticker shock. 

Between the Temerario’s angry cheese-grater looks and mind-melting speed, it all feels a bit excessive — even by Lamborghini’s somewhat deranged standards. I’m sceptical and, judging by comments posted on various social platforms, I’m not alone.

Why Is the Temerario the Way It Is?

Rouven Mohr, Lamborghini’s chief technical officer, is standing around at Estoril ready to explain Lamborghini’s thinking on this one. He gets it. He, too, is a diehard car enthusiast. (His personal car collection over-indexes on ‘90s Japanese machines, especially drift cars.)

Mohr tells me the Temerario is the way it is because Lamborghini knows its customers. They want more power, more cylinders, and more performance, he explains. This is Lamborghini, after all. “Doing less,” isn’t really in the brand’s wheelhouse — most supercar customers want bragging rights.

Making a lighter, less-powerful car without the complex hybrid system or the turbos was out of the question. Something like that would’ve been a total failure in the market, Mohr says. With a car like that, Lamborghini would be lucky to sell one-third the number they’re hoping to with the Temerario. (For reference, the Huracán accounted for roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the company’s 10,000 annual sales in recent years.)

If more power was the goal, then why not do a naturally-aspirated engine, without the turbos, but with a hybrid system? Mohr says the engineering team looked into that possibility. But to get enough power without turbos, any engine would’ve had to be big, perhaps 6.0 litres of displacement or more. And Lamborghini already offers a 6.5L naturally-aspirated V12 with a hybrid system in its flagship Revuelto supercar. The products would overlap too much, so that idea was quickly nixed.

Lamborghini settled on an all-new twin-turbo 4.0L V8 with a pair of axial-flux electric motors on the front axle, another one between the engine and gearbox, and a 3.8-kWh battery pack nestled between the seats. Oh, and the engine revs to 10,000 rpm. At the risk of stating the obvious, 10,000 rpm is unheard of in a turbo engine. Usually they’re all about low-end torque, but this one was built to rev. There’s nothing else like it, with a linear torque curve that keeps going up and up to over 9,000 rpm.

Mohr tells me the new twin-turbo V8 costs twice what the V10 cost to build, even before you add the price of the hybrid components. Lamborghini is going all-in on this new turbo-hybrid engine.

Enough Talk — What’s It Like To Drive?

The first thing you notice is how much more spacious the cockpit is. There’s even a place to put a phone! You couldn’t say that about the old Huracán. The 34-millimetre taller roof means headroom is no longer terrible; it’s now perfectly adequate. There’s more legroom. A pair of carry-on suitcases fit in the frunk.

The second thing you notice after firing up the engine is that the digital tachometer goes past 10,000 rpm. I have to remind myself not to upshift too early. It’s a bit like riding a motorbike in that way.

As the revs rise, the sound changes: first it’s ordinary, then aggressive, then like a buzzsaw, then like some primordial mechanical banshee. Looking on from outside the car it’s strangely quiet rocketing past at 250 km/h, but from inside the sound is — in my professional opinion — quite good. (Not as good as the old V10, mind you.)

Coming out of corners is where the clever electrically-boosted hybrid system makes itself known. There’s an instant gut-wrenching hit of electric power as soon as you touch the throttle. It’s uncomfortably quick at times. 

Turbo lag? What’s that? The e-motors cover any and all lag until the two ginormous turbos spool up. (Those giant turbos are necessary to feed a 4.0L engine spinning at 10,000 rpm.) Just as Mohr promised, the power feels linear, building to around 9,000 rpm and plateauing until nearly 1,000 more. 

And then there’s the raw speed. Even seasoned drivers will be shocked by the way 907 hp seems to compress the time-space continuum that exists between corners.

Turn-in is even more surreal. In sport mode especially, the car pivots into bends so quickly it feels as if it’s about to spin. This, Mohr explains, is due to clever torque vectoring on the front axle that uses regeneration on the two electric motors and/or braking to suck the car towards the apex. The rear tires hang on for dear life at the limit of their grip, where they can be easily provoked into some lurid mid-corner oversteer. Despite the fact the Temerario is around 150 to 200 kg (331 to 441 lb) heavier than its predecessor, it’s so much more darty, agile, and playful.

Braking from more than 300 km/h, the car’s agility mercifully disappears and is replaced by a confidence inspiring stability that is rare in mid-engine supercars. Again, Mohr explains this is the magic of the e-motors’ ability to precisely control each wheel. Lamborghini’s in-house control software for all the sub-systems orchestrates everything so the car feels stable when you need it to be, yet agile and playful when you want it to be. It’s deeply impressive, if not instantly intuitive like the Huracán Technica, but the overall performance is in another league.

Final Thoughts

Nine flying laps of Estoril were not nearly enough to get to grips with such a massively complex machine as the Temerario. First impressions are of a car that feels a bit like handling a trained lion: fearsome, powerful, but it gives you at least a good illusion of control. With so few laps, I’m not totally sure whether the Temerario will maul you if you make a silly move, or if it really is just a big friendly cat, but there’s no denying it’s a wildly entertaining thing. Despite the extreme power, it felt right to drive it like a big go-kart, throwing it into corners and letting it slide and squirm through bends. 

Yes, I do still miss the old V10. But I’m also looking forward to coming to grips with this new high-revving, high-tech, turbo-hybrid V8. Of all the turbocharged engines I’ve ever sampled — pretty much all of them over the last decade or so — this one is my new personal favourite, simply because of its linear delivery and sky-high redline. Even more tantalising is the fact the Temerario is just the beginning of this new platform for Lamborghini.