By Mark Smeyers on March 5. 2021 in LamboNEWS.
It seems Automobili Lamborghini SpA wants us to get some background information on what’s going on at the factory in Sant’Agata, by giving us behind the scenes photos or talking about the stories that made Lamborghini great, giving an insight into the lesser-known enigmas of a global exotic car maker located in Italy.
So they created #Focu5on, a monthly format that will give us “Five things you didn’t know about …”, and for March 2021, the inaugural editions, they lift the cloak on the latest and greatest when it comes to V10 powered Bulls, the 640 hp Huracán STO, for Super Trofeo Omologata.
We won’t be seeing any customer deliveries until later in 2021, but the famous Blu Laufey finished demo-cars have been traveling all over the world over the past few months to persuade customers to put in their order … and it seems to work, as several YouTube channels have committed themselves to add an STO to their garage, one of them being Shmee150, who is finally adding a Lamborghini to the Shmeemobiles.
Back to Lamborghini’s #Focu5on, here are five things Lamborghini thinks we didn’t already know about the impressive Huracan STO:
COFANGO, a “Made in Lamborghini” design solution
We all know the entire front section on the new Huracan STO tilts forward to gain access to what lies underneath the bonnet, just like it did on the legendary Lamborghini Miura from the Sixties … and they call this the Cofango.
Cofango is taken from the collation of two words that describe this part, cofano which means hood in Italian, and parafango, the Italian for fender … and as this entire section is one part that combines both the hood and the fenders … it’s called the Cofango, made entirely from carbon fiber.
And there isn’t a lever inside the cockpit to open the Cofango, instead Lamborghini ships a bespoke, 3D printed ‘key’ to open the quick-release fasteners on both the Cofango and the engine cover, the latter being a ‘lift-off’ unit, so you’ll need two persons to remove it … wouldn’t it have been amazing if that would also tilt up like on the Miura?
Dynamic pit stop in just three seconds
It’s no secret the Lamborghini Huracan STO was heavily inspired by the Huracan Super Trofeo racecar, acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h only takes 3 seconds in the STO, and 200 km/h is reached within 9 seconds.
But changing the driving mode with that red button on the steering wheel only takes 3 seconds.
Going from STO (normal driving), Trofeo (race mode) to Pioggia (raining or wet) is done by moving the ANIMA button, and it transforms the car just like a dynamic pit stop with a team of mechanics.
Three times around the world in simulator tests
Long gone are the days’ people like Bob Wallace would take a Miura on the open road and glue strands of wool on the body … today it’s all about CAD and even computer-aided simulation.
Before an actual Lamborghini Huracan STO test-mule was even put onto the streets, they had a state-of-the-art simulator do a total of about 120,000 km (75,000 miles) of testing to verify that every part of the car fully complied with standards during different stages of the STO’s development, certifying and subsequently road testing
2,750 components to make an STO
At the Lamborghini factory in Sant’Agata, it takes 18 hours to build an Aventador, and 15 hours to put together a Huracán, if you count an 8-hour working day on the assembly line, you’ll see a brand new Huracán on her wheels leaving the line every two days.
And to build the new Lamborghini Huracán STO from start to finish they require to assemble a total of 2,750 parts, let’s hope at the end of the line they don’t hear someone half-way asking himself ‘where did this bolt go?’
Connected telemetry thanks to 25,000 lines of code
Lamborghini already had their UNICA app for smartphones, dedicated to Lamborghini owners as the app is coupled to the chassis number of your car.
With the Huracan STO, you get a lot of telemetry information for when you take this car onto her natural habitat, the track, this combines data trackers, but also cameras on-board the V10 … and all this information can be coupled to your personal UNICA app via the Cloud.
Developing this extra feature into the Lamborghini UNICA app took the software team a total of 25,000 lines of code it seems.
I can’t wait for next month’s issue of Focu5on and find out what they will be talking about then.