2026 Lamborghini Temerario Street Drive: Just One Small Problem

We’ve driven the 2026 Lamborghini Temerario on the track, with Jonny Lieberman earlier this year thrashing Lambo’s all-new replacement for the much-loved Huracán around the technical and challenging old Formula 1 track at Estoril in Portugal. He found the Temerario to be a quick and confidence-inspiring supercar. Its hybrid powertrain is awash with instantly accessible power and torque; its braking is strong and consistent; and its chassis is well balanced. But as he spent 99 percent of his time in the 907-horsepower mid-engine coupe with the car set to Corsa (Race) mode and his right foot mashing the gas pedal to the floor at every opportunity, he came away with little insight as to how Lamborghini’s entry-level supercar behaves in the real world, on the road.

Well, buckle up. We just spent most of a day in a selection of Temerarios, dodging Fiats and Fords on the roads around Lamborghini’s HQ in Sant’Agata Bolognese.

First, a Quick Technical Recap

All-new, the 2026 Lamborghini Temerario boasts a 907-hp plug-in hybrid powertrain anchored by a 4.0-liter twin-turbo flat-plane-crank V-8 that revs to an ungodly 10,000 rpm and develops 789 hp and 538 lb-ft of torque. Extra muscle comes courtesy of a trio of e-motors, two at the front axle driving the front wheels—the hardware is the same as that used in the bigger Revuelto—and a third located between the engine and the transversely mounted eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. The braking system is now by-wire, and the front rotors are clamped by 10-piston calipers.

It’s a good-looking thing, the Temerario, its panels pulled tightly over a wheelbase 1.5 inches longer than that of the Huracán and awash with familiar Lamborghini forms and graphics, though rendered slightly more softly. The Temerario is not as brutally, flamboyantly aggressive-looking as the Revuelto—the larger Lambo’s edgy excess would be hard to pull off on a smaller car. But that’s not to suggest it looks wimpy. There’s a reptilian menace to the slit-like headlight graphic up front. The rear end, with its large, high-mounted central exhaust outlet, exposed rear tires, and riotous collection of aero angles and surfaces, looks as if it has been lifted straight from a GT3 race car. The roomier interior—thank the wheelbase stretch—is straight from the modern Lamborghini playbook in terms of its form language, though it boasts new infotainment hardware and software.

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Taking It to the Street

We switch to Citta (City) mode and ease out into traffic on Via Modena, the road that runs past the now greatly expanded and modernized Lamborghini factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese. In Citta mode, the Temerario drives as an EV, pulled along by the pair of 148-hp Yasa axial flow e-motors driving the front wheels. They seem loud, even louder than the similar motors in the Mercedes-AMG GT XX concept, as if the noise’s paths through the car’s carbon-fiber structure haven’t really been fleshed out as much as they should be. Fortunately, you don’t have to put up with it for long: Fully charged, the Temerario’s 3.8-kWh lithium-ion battery pack delivers a pure electric driving range of just 6 miles.

Strada (Street) is your daily driving mode, with three power levels available depending on whether you select Hybrid, Recharge, or Performance submodes. Of these, Strada/Hybrid mode is the best all-rounder, as it blends the power flows from the internal combustion engine and the e-motors to deliver the best balance between performance and efficiency. Left to its own devices in Sport/Hybrid mode, the Temerario cruises along nicely, the eight-speed gearbox slipping neatly into the next higher ratio at little more than 2,000 rpm. In eighth gear at 2,000 rpm, the Lambo bowls along at just more than 40 mph and will happily mooch along on light throttle in the lower gears with just 1,500 rpm on the tach.

This car might look like it would have you spitting blood and feathers on a simple Starbucks run, but the Temerario is as easy and effortless as a Toyota is to drive around town. It’s also … faintly disappointing. The Huracán’s V-10, a brawny, bellowing bruiser of an engine, is charismatic from the moment you fire it up; there’s a truculent menace to it, even at idle. But the Temerario’s noisy direct-injection system means the V-8 sounds like a rattly old diesel while tooling around town at low revs on light throttle.

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And Yet …

As we discovered while attacking a tight and twisting road through the hills an hour south of Sant’Agata Bolognese with the powertrain in Corsa mode and the slick, quick-shifting transmission switched to manual, the Temerario’s V-8 is an astonishing engine. The powerband is utterly extraordinary. With the e-motors assisting, it pulls like a train from 2,000 rpm all the way to the 10,000-rpm redline. And as the tach swings past 4,000 rpm, all memory of that low-speed, light-throttle rattle is erased by a never-ending scream that builds and builds and builds until you think you best make an upshift. Then you glance at the tach and see you still have another 2,000 rpm to go before the engine nuzzles the rev limiter. It is an engine for the gods.

That rev band means the Temerario will destroy almost any canyon road without getting near third gear, as 10,000 rpm in second delivers almost 90 mph. But what impresses even more is the nuance in the powertrain’s delivery; despite all that horsepower and torque, it responds brilliantly to the transient throttle inputs that are the inevitable byproduct of hustling a fast car down an unfamiliar road, especially with the ridiculous V-8 spinning beyond 6,000 rpm.

Like the backing singers on an old Motown hit song, the Temerario’s e-motors smoothly and seamlessly support the headline act. The motor between the engine and the transmission provides torque fill when needed, while the two at the front enable cross-axle torque vectoring in addition to providing additional traction. All you feel from behind the wheel is a near seamless surge of thrust as you work through the gears, along with the fact you can go to power quite early through corners without initiating understeer. The light steering does not quite deliver the ultimate clarity delivered by Ferrari’s 296, but the feel is good and the accuracy terrific—the Temerario just goes where you point it. An occasional squirm from the rear end under power in Sport or Corsa modes reminds you most of the power and torque hits the tarmac via the rear wheels.

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In the End

Racetracks are smooth. Italian-hill roads are not. Even though its ride is not ultimately as fluent as that of a McLaren 750S, the 2026 Lamborghini Temerario copes well with large vertical inputs, never feeling out of synch with the road, even when you hit a big bump mid-corner in Corsa mode with the suspension in its stiffest setting. And while the stupendously powerful brakes provide consistent and unflinching stopping power on the track, on the road the great feel through the pedal means you can use them as a precision instrument to help the front e-motors fine-tune the little Lambo’s balance all the way to a corner’s apex.

Despite all its carbon-fiber and aluminum pieces, the Temerario still weighs close to 4,000 pounds with a full tank of gas, yet it feels more agile and responsive on the road than the smaller, lighter Huracán. It might be a supercar with more horsepower than a McLaren P1 or a Porsche 918 Spyder, a car that will rocket from 0 to 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds on the way to a top speed of 213 mph, but it’s also a surprisingly well-rounded machine. If you can afford the $390,000-odd price tag, this is a Lamborghini you can legitimately use as a daily driver. We’d just like it to sound more like a supercar on the run down to Starbucks.