Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato vs. Porsche 911 Dakar: Off-Road Unicorns Unite!

Our editors don’t typically jockey for assignments, which are usually doled out fairly from on high based on availability, expertise, and existing workload.

Usually.

However, the friendly fighting to land the assignment to cover the launches for the 2023 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato and 2023 Porsche 911 Dakar—two out-of-left-field off-road-ready supercars—began almost the moment we heard their makers were putting them into production.

Amplifying the stakes further were the events Lamborghini and Porsche had in store for the media during the cars’ first-drive programs: a week trekking through the Moroccan desert for the Porsche, and hybridized on-/off-road track sessions at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in the Mojave desert just east of Palm Springs, California, for the Huracan Sterrato. Considering both the Lamborghini and Porsche were limited-run models that sold out quickly, we suspected those experiences might be the only times our editors would get to drive either car in anger. Features editor Scott Evans got the call for the Dakar for the 13-hour flight to Africa, while features editor Christian Seabaugh got the less glamorous three-hours-in-traffic drive out to the SoCal desert for the Sterrato. 

Both came back raving about their respective drives, and with both vehicles on hand for our recent 2024 MotorTrend Performance Vehicle of the Year evaluations, we forced our two relevant editors to swap seats and review the other car. You know, for science. –Ed.

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Rally Italia

I never thought I’d drive this car.

Two years ago, I sat across the table from Lamborghini’s then-new technical boss, Rouven Mohr, at a steakhouse in Colorado Springs, Colorado, digging for dirt not on the Urus Performante SUV prototype that had just set the Pikes Peak production SUV record earlier that day but on the Huracán Sterrato. I knew it was coming, but when? Surely it was already sold out, so would they even let the press drive it, and if so, when and where? I wanted that golden ticket.

I didn’t get it. I knew the moment I was offered the Dakar launch I’d probably never touch the Sterrato, much less drive it fast off-road. My boss likes me, but not enough to incur the wrath of the entire staff by giving me both those drives. I drove an amazing car in an amazing location, and I let go of the Sterrato dream. Now here I am strapping luggage to the roof rack of a Sterrato in my driveway and setting course for Chuckwalla Raceway.

The difference here is that Porsche had something to prove, and Lamborghini didn’t. No one ever entered a Countach in the Dakar Rally, nor are Diablo owners turning them into off-road “safari” editions, as air-cooled 911 owners are. Lamborghini built the Sterrato because it sounded like a stupid amount of fun and the company figured some of its customers would want in on it. Hence, no height-adjustable suspension and low-speed crawl mode for when the trail gets tough. The Sterrato wasn’t meant to go overlanding, it was meant to grace rally courses with the most beautiful engine note they’ll ever encounter.

With its accessory off-road lights pointed east, the Sterrato immediately sprang its biggest surprise: you can’t tell the difference on the road. A Lamborghini V-10 is loud, so whatever additional noise the all-terrain tires, cargo rack, and roof scoop add to the din of a Huracán EVO is inconsequential. Equally, you don’t really notice any change in driving position afforded by the 1.7-inch-greater ride height in a car that still stands barely four feet tall sans rack. No, the only real difference is you can worry a lot less about steep driveways, big speed bumps, and deep potholes. That peace of mind alone, especially in Los Angeles, is worth the cost of entry if you can already afford a Lamborghini.

It’s not that the ride quality is appreciably better on the endless miles of expansion joints and patch jobs that litter Southern California roadways; it’s that I no longer care about them. I know I don’t have to worry about hurting the car, because it’s designed for far worse. It’s designed for where I’m headed.

In a way, I’m bringing the Huracán Sterrato home. The signage from the international press launch is still posted up at the entrance to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway, and the track’s staff has agreed to let us drive these cars both on the paved road course and the infield dirt track created specifically for the first press drives of this car. In a way, I’m getting both experiences, just like I always wanted.

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Hitting the road course first, the Sterrato’s one big compromise reveals itself. It’s hardly surprising that all-terrain tires don’t grip like an R-compound street tire, but understeer just isn’t something you expect in a Huracán. Luckily, it’s easy enough to drive around the diminished front-end bite: separate your actions. Where any other Lambo will let you trail brake and carry all the speed into a corner, the Sterrato requires separate braking and turning inputs. It feels like going back to performance driving 101, but it works. Get all your braking done in a straight line before you even think about turning the wheel. Get all the weight on the nose and it’ll stick, and once it does, you can roll back into the power and blast out of the corner. Heck, you can even go hog wild and leave the corner sideways. You just can’t ask as much from the front end as you normally would. It’s a problem that only shows itself on the track, so if you plan to keep it to roads, paved and unpaved, you don’t need to think about it. (Looking for more details about the Sterrato’s performance? Read our First Test story here.)

Familiarized with the new handling behavior, it’s time to find out why this car exists. Leaving the track surface at speed in a Lamborghini is mildly terrifying, especially when you can’t afford to fix it, but the Sterrato treats it like a nonevent. The tires and shocks do their thing and suddenly the entire car makes sense. Sideways at freeways speeds with sand flying everywhere and the V-10 howling through your helmet like it’s not even there, you get it. The Lamborghini people were right: this is a stupid amount of fun.

You might think, “Oh, I could do that in a side-by-side for way less money,” but side-by-sides don’t sound like this, and even the fastest ones aren’t this fast. They also don’t keep the sand out and the A/C blowing while you play Group B driver in comfort. Trust me, I’ve driven them. The only way you top this is with a trophy truck (which, incidentally, is cheaper).

After a bunch of laps, though, the dirt track is getting torn up and the Sterrato’s limits make themselves known. Though it’s built to take an off-road beating by Lamborghini sports-car standards, those standards aren’t particularly high. As the ruts get deeper, the impacts to both the suspension and the car’s underbody protection get harder. The car absorbs it all admirably, while the driver’s anxiety takes the real damage. If Lamborghini does another of this type of car in the future, hydraulic jounce absorbers integrated into the shocks would make an enormous difference. As it is, the dampers bottom-out hard enough to make you pull over on the spot and look for career-ending damage.

The Sterrato, then, is not about desert racing or rock-crawling or really any hardcore off-roading. It’s far more specialized than that. Like Mohr told me two years ago, it’s about going fast on gravel roads in the summer and snowy roads in the winter. Roads that are maintained to some degree. Enjoying this car as it was meant to be driven is as much about knowing how to drive it as knowing where to drive it. In the appropriate habitat, it’s the most fun you can have on four wheels. —Scott Evans

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Dakar Will Take You Far

“Yes, yes, you had a great time in Morocco, but I don’t want to drive the Porsche.” I never really thought I’d ever say those words (well, the Porsche bit), but I also never thought Lamborghini would build a 21st-century homage to Group B rally cars, or that I’d fall in love with the Sterrato after spending a day slinging it sideways around a makeshift rallycross course in the middle of the Mojave Desert during the Sterrato’s launch. As Scott slipped into the Lamborghini—smartly outfitted with a luggage-filled roof basket and rally lights—fired that wonderful Italian V-10 to life, and waved goodbye with a single-finger salute and a scrape of the Huracan’s nose on his driveway, I was willing to consider being wrong.

I’ve always believed the coolest Porsches are the most subtle ones. Think 911 GT3 Touring, or a debadged 911 Turbo S; the sleeper factor almost always works in the 911’s favor. This 911 Dakar I’d been left with, on the other hand, outfitted with the $28,470 Rallye Design Pack, looks like the kind of option rich dorks in fleece vests select to maximize resale value.

Ostensibly a tribute to the Rothmans Tobacco livery sported by the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally-winning 911 SC/RS, the Gentian blue, white, red, and gold livery, complete with “Roughroads” graphics, reads a bit cosplay to me. So does the kitted-out roof rack, complete with dual jerry cans (empty), recovery boards (too small to be useful), and a waterproof recovery bag (filled with a collapsible shovel and a car cover). At least I might be able to discreetly bury Scott if he mentioned Morocco again. The white five-spoke wheels shod with Pirelli all-terrains, however, looked great. Seeing as I’ve yet to drive a bad 911, I figured it should be a strong performer, too.

The GTS trim is the performance sweet spot in Porsche’s 911 lineup, so it’s a suitable jumping-off point for the 911 Dakar. Hanging back over the 911 Dakar’s rear axle is Porsche’s 3.0-liter twin-turbo flat-six fitted with Turbo S cooling hardware for desert duty, good in this tune for 473 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque. It’s paired with an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic feeding Porsche’s torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system, which, combined with the rear-steer system from the 911 GT3, ought to make for a pointy-feeling Porsche.

The Dakar package is surprisingly extensive given what Lamborghini did to its Huracán Sterrato. The 911 Dakar gets a height-adjustable hydraulic suspension with nearly 2 inches of additional ground clearance in its default ride height and 7.5 inches at max height, plus two new off-road modes to the Lambo’s one—Off-Road for the slow stuff and Rallye for the fast. Plus, you know, the “decorations” on the outside, like the flared wheel arches and new skidplates.

I slipped into the high riding Porsche for the first time, fired the turbocharged flat-six up into its low burble, and set out after Scott and the Sterrato.

The freeway is a place I’d typically expect a 911 to coddle me. The Dakar—it’s uncomfortable fixed-angle seat backs notwithstanding—is no exception. Like the others of its ilk, its rear- and sideview mirrors are more than just ornamental, and the cabin is shockingly spacious for the class. Despite the all-terrains and gear on the roof, it’s also somehow much quieter than I expected it to be. Check that—it’s much nicer to drive than I expected it to be. Porsche 911s are famously easy to live with, but the Dakar somehow is more so. That extra ground clearance and those cushy tire sidewalls help smooth out rough expansion joints and help make it easier to spot gaps in traffic. Better still, like any 911, tapping the boost button on the steering wheel immediately summons the lowest possible gear ratio, making it easy to take advantage of those gaps—even if you don’t reach them quite as quickly as you might in lighter or more powerful 911s.

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The gawks the 911 Dakar elicits are also new. You can’t throw a rock in Southern California without hitting a Porsche of one kind or another, but the cell phones directed at the Dakar as I pulled into a remote desert gas station were the sort of reaction I only ever see in truly exotic cars. It even had me thinking maybe those fleece-vest guys might just know a thing or two after all—that is until I got trapped in a conversation about why it says “Roughroads,” how Porsche doesn’t have the legal right to “just use the Rothmans logo,” and why it was probably unsavory for Porsche to pay for the right from the tobacco giant that owns the brand’s rights. I think I’ll stand safe by my belief that the best Porsche is a subtle Porsche—less talking, more driving that way.

I could hear the Sterrato ripping around Chuckwalla’s road course long before I saw it. It sounded even better from behind as I pulled the Dakar, recovery gear and all, out of pit lane and onto the track after it. Time to see what this Porsche is all about.

Wow. Who knew the key to making a 911 better on track was to make it worse? (For more details about the 911 Dakar’s raw performance, read our First Test report here.)

Taller, heavier, and with way less grip than you’re used to in these types of sports cars, the Dakar is 1984 remastered for 2024. Softer and squidgier than its contemporaries, the 911 Dakar captures the feel of its air-cooled ancestors. Its nose is sharp and turn-in is quick, yet if you come on the power early—or off it midcorner—the Dakar’s rear gets loose and starts to step out. Once you understand that the Porsche’s modern all-wheel-drive and stability-control systems aren’t ever going to let you snap-oversteer like you might in its predecessors, this characteristic can be used to quickly point the Dakar’s nose toward the next straight—or, just enjoy yourself as you swing the tail wide through tighter corners.

If the dust clouds floating over Chuckwalla’s back straight were any indication, more fun could be had on the very same sand and dirt course that had me falling in love on the Huracán Sterrato’s launch months back.

It’s almost immediately apparent just how overengineered the 911 Dakar is, considering the only “off-roading” most owners will do is in the grass lawn of a Concours event. That’s a shame; I quickly learned there’s little in life more enjoyable than using the Dakar’s Rallye Start launch control, listening to the roar of its flat-six over pebbles bouncing off its lightly armored belly, and watching rooster tails of sand and dirt spray out from its rearview mirror. I must’ve done this dozens of times. It never got old.

Despite the somewhat silly premise for its existence, the 911 Dakar is unquestionably a serious car—one in which you might truly entertain notions of entering a dirt or ice time-trial event. With gobs of low-end power and an excess of grip, the Dakar somehow just sticks to the course, easily staying pointed to wherever your eyes and hands guide the car. It’s composed and focused—decidedly Porsche-like. That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had here, though. With all traction and stability controls sidelined, the Dakar’s natural imbalance is easy to use to your advantage, Scandi-flicking into corners, four-wheel drifting through, and blasting down the next straight like an actual rally car.

It isn’t one, though, of course. As our impromptu rallycross course deteriorated, speeds naturally had to come down. Like the now clearly slower Sterrato, there’s simply not enough travel in the Dakar’s suspension—especially at max ride height—for it to handle the speeds the rest of the car wants to travel at. It’s easy to look at that as a negative, but I prefer the glass-half-full approach—it’s just another excuse to rip the Dakar sideways through the sand.

As I did, I couldn’t help but think how wrong I’d been. I don’t want to stop driving the 911 Dakar. Like the Lamborghini, it’s pure unbridled joy on four wheels. It’s unique. A laugh riot. Both cars deserve to be regular parts of their manufacturer’s lineups. I might’ve missed out on Morocco, but at least the Porsche, Lamborghini, and I—okay, and Scott—would always have Chuckwalla. —Christian Seabaugh