I like Jeremy Clarkson, especially the way he expresses himself. Now he proved, that RC bought the right car. 
The Motor Awards 2018: Jeremy Clarkson’s car of the year — Lamborghini Huracan Performante
Designed by 10-year-olds for show-offs like me: McLaren’s Senna is faster, but for pure joie de vivre Jeremy picks a Lambo
McLaren has tried a few times over the years to make a supercar that would rewrite the rulebooks and do to Ferrari on the road what it had done so many times on the world’s racetracks. Beat it with a big stick. The first effort was the F1, which had a central driving position, an engine bay lined with gold and a top speed that caused many at the time to say: “I’m sorry. Did you just say 240mph?”
I disliked it a lot. It was extremely wobbly, and this made it hard to handle — a point demonstrated by Rowan Atkinson, who frequently completed journeys in his by flying backwards into a ditch in an expensive cloud of carbon fibre and broken glass.
Next, the boys from Woking helped Mercedes come up with the SLR, which looked a bit like an SLK that had been to the gym, via that Russian doping chemist’s laboratory. Weirdly, I did like it, even though I will concede its early-days carbon brakes felt as if they were being operated by a switch. You pressed the pedal and nothing happened. So you pressed it more and nothing continued to happen. So in a panic you pressed it some more and then you went through the windscreen.
After the SLR, McLaren plainly decided to transfer all the best people from its racing division to the road car operation and came up with the MP4-12C. In every way that mattered to the then boss, Ron Dennis, it was a fabulous car, with more torque, power and downforce than any rival Ferrari. But supercars cannot be measured by numbers. And in the only contest that mattered — the battle to win your heart — the McLaren felt like an accountant and the Ferrari like an accountant’s mistress.
McLaren tried to make the MP4-12C more exciting. It even shortened the name to 12C so it sounded less like a fax machine. But McLaren didn’t really succeed until it took the hybrid tech from a Toyota Prius, weaponised it and used it to create the fearsome P1.
I loved that car. It was nuts. It scared you half to death at half throttle and understeered like a wayward drunk if you went all in. Porsche and Ferrari had cleverer and faster rivals, but for hairs-on-end thrills the P1 was just brilliant.
And now McLaren has made something even better. It is based loosely on the 720S and doesn’t have hybrid drive: just a 4-litre twin-turbo V8 that produces a mere 789bhp. The top speed is just 211mph, and that’s nothing to write home about.
However, I’m going to stick my neck out and say no road car would be able to get round a track faster than this machine. Which is why McLaren has called it the Senna. The secret to its track performance is low weight. The seats weigh just 8kg each, which is about the same as one of Keira Knightley’s hairs. And the doors are just 9kg. The whole car? Well, you don’t have to worry about parking it. You could just pick it up and take it with you.
Because there’s no fat to drag the car out of line, it turns into a corner like nothing I’ve experienced before. And for the same reason it stops so quickly that, time and again, I’d brake for a bend and then have to accelerate up to the apex. You need a system reset in your head to get used to the way this car goes and stops and corners. There are CGI spaceships in Star Trek that are less dainty and quick-witted.
It is, then, far and away the best supercar you can buy right now. It’s a triumph. And yet I’d still rather have what is my car of the year, Lamborghini’s Huracan Performante. Partly this is because the Senna costs £750,000 and the Lambo is half a million pounds cheaper. And partly it’s because the Senna doesn’t have air-conditioning — it’s too heavy. But mostly it’s because the Senna impresses your head and heart while the Huracan is busy in your underpants.
Serious people who talk about the Brooklands and Prescott hillclimbs and Colin Chapman have it in their heads that the real supercar battle these days is between Ferrari and McLaren, and they’re right, of course. Both build cars to go round a corner 0.1mph faster, whereas Lamborghini just paints everything orange. Lamborghini, I like to think, is run by a bunch of 10-year-olds.
Sure, it’s owned by the Germans these days, which is why the books get balanced and the tax gets paid and the engines work for more than 16 seconds. But the way the cars feel and sound and look — that’s all done by a gang of Italian schoolchildren who’ve had too much pop. You get the sense that, were it not for Audi being all headmasterly, the Huracan would have space lasers on the roof.
Lamborghini actually did a version called the Avio, which was inspired by Italy’s fighter planes, and another one called the Polizia, which it gave to the police after one of the two Gallardos Plod had been using was destroyed in an accident and the other ended up in a museum. Oh, and then there was the Huracan Pope Francis. I have no idea why, either.
But it’s the Performante that stands out. It’s only a little bit more powerful than the standard car and wades into battle with just 630bhp. But, thanks to some lightweight parts and a lot of careful jiggery-pokery with the aerodynamics (Lambo says it produces 750% more downforce than the standard car, as children do — I’m surprised it didn’t say “a million”), it set one of the fastest Nürburgring lap times yet.
Some accused Lamborghini of cheating — it didn’t — and I can see why, because a lap time round the “Green Hell” of 6 minutes and 52.01 seconds sort of beggars belief. It’s like claiming you’ve dived deeper than a US Virginia-class submarine using nothing but a bucket and a length of hoover pipe.
The Senna would go faster, I’m sure, but it wouldn’t have the V10 bellow and howl of the Lambo. And the truth is Lambos may look as if they belong on the track but they don’t. Not really. They are — and always have been — for showing off. They’re big watches, nebuchadnezzars of champagne, beautiful girlfriends and Riva speedboats. They’re Le Club 55 in St Tropez, and everyone laughs at that. But everyone goes when they have half a chance, because you’d rather eat a second-hand piece of cauliflower on Pampelonne beach than the perfect soufflé in a basement.
If you want the perfect soufflé in a basement, get a McLaren or a Ferrari. But I think that if you want to live, you should live. And that means getting yourself the car of the year: the Lamborghini Huracan Performante.
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We're at the point where you can be the fastest or just sound like you're the fastest.
The secret of life is to admire without desiring.
Still...I agree. The Porsche GT3 models are pretty neat track tools and the competition can barely cope with that, there aren't many cars in this price league to compete with them.
Very good offer from Porsche, if not the best offer.
Actually I hardly ever seen one that does not have it !
