Lamborghini’s Temerario Destroys Windshields—And Electric Motors Are To Blame

• The Lamborghini Temerario is the automaker’s first V8 hybrid with three electric motors.
• All of that instant electric torque, combined with some rather risque bodywork, is spelling trouble for anybody following behind it.
• Matt Farah says he managed to crack three windshields while filming the car.

The Temerario is one of Lamborghini’s hottest new hybrid supercars. Its powerful twin-turbo engine is enough to be exciting, but the Italians kicked it up a notch by pairing it with not one, but three electric motors—a first for the raging bull.

But speaking of kicking up, it also has a pretty interesting problem that is wreaking havoc for other drivers on the road.

According to Matt Farah, host of The Smoking Tire, the Temerario might be a riot to drive, but it’s an absolute menace to follow. He recently appeared on an episode of Spike’s Car Radio where he talked about filming the European-spec version of the hybrid Lambo, where he was pelted by pebbles and managed to crack three windshields while chasing it. And one look at the rear of the car will show you exactly why it happened.

Photo by: Lamborghini

“I’ve never driven any car in my life that gravel-cannons like this car. You can’t get within 50 feet of one of these things,” Farah said, recalling the incident. “We cracked three windshields.”

He had host Spike Feresten pull up a photo of the Temerario’s rear and pointed out how exposed the rear tires are. You can see it in the photo above, too—the rear bumper is cut quite high, exposing about two-thirds of the rear tires.

And, yes, it looks absolutely amazing. By removing bumper material, Lamborghini managed to add such an aggressive appearance to the car. But it also managed to create a rock slingshot for anybody who dares to follow it.

“I was shooting car-to-car,” said Farah. “We had a shot on the on the windshield of the [Corvette] ZR1, and I’m chasing the Lambo and I have the roof off the ZR1 [chase car]. I took a rock to the face in a corner. Like I took a big rock to the cheek. I’m so glad I was wearing my sunglasses.”

So what gives here, and why are we talking about it on an EV blog?

Well, in addition to the car’s bodywork exposing the rear tire tread like a semi truck without mudflaps, its three electric motors have really amped up the car’s rock-slinging power. Two of those electric motors power the front wheels, which aren’t really a threat.

But that third motor—which is mounted between the crankshaft and the gearbox—is specifically used to prop up the car’s low-end power with 220 foot-pounds of instantaneous electric torque and give the car a bit more power when first blipping the throttle (effectively hiding that pesky turbo lag). All of the higher-rev region of the powertrain is covered by the V8 and its two chunky turbos.

Photo by: Lamborghini

Let’s take a minute to talk about what happens when a car throws a rock from the rear wheels.

Tires are meant to grip the road’s surface. On dry pavement, warm rubber creates a tremendous amount of grip and the sportier the tire, the more grip there is to aid in acceleration and cornering. But that also means potentially carrying a small stone with it until centrifugal force does its thing and shoots the rock in the direction that the tires are rotating.

Gobs of instantaneous torque potentially add in the shear at the tire contact patch. This might help to wedge those stones into the rubber and tread during the pickup phase at low speeds. The actual launch phase of the rocks (which is when they leave the tire compound and go windshield-ward) is governed primarily by wheel speed.

So when the rocks are spun or jostled free of their rubbery prison—whether it be due to quick instant acceleration or the sudden onslaught of torque aided by the electric motor when blipping the throttle—they’re sent rearward. And because the Temeraio has practically no rear coverage, there’s nothing to catch those stray rocks when they come loose. The rock flies free and into the personal space of whatever (or whoever) is behind it. Farah calls this “crazy.”

“I kind of like that they don’t care,” he said. “I would just be shocked if there isn’t some kind of class-action lawsuit or something because like I didn’t know you could just sell a car with, like, fully exposed rear tires. And they’re sticky, so they just they just [throw rocks]. It’s crazy.”

Oh, and let’s not forget that Lamborghini debuted a new “Drift Mode” on the Temerario as well. So good luck, bystanders.

Farah isn’t the first person to think about this happening, but he might be one of the first to experience it first hand (or, face, I guess). Keyboard engineers on Reddit Reddit and online forums predicted that the car would fling up rocks, and apparently they were right.

But three windshields? That’s an insane amount of carnage to rack up from a single car. Most people probably haven’t cracked their own car’s windshield three times while owning it.

I guess it’s a good way to keep folks from tailgating your $390,000 Italian supercar. But that isn’t where you want to be anyway, according to Farah:

“You don’t want to be behind it—you want to be in it. In it, it’s not a problem. It drives so good.”