Huracán Coupé or Spider: The Roof Question, Answered Honestly

Both bodies take the same daily rate in this garage, which removes money from the decision and leaves only the roof. The Spider is heavier and slower on paper, and for the way a Huracán is actually used in Los Angeles that almost never matters.

We hold three Huracáns: one fixed-roof coupé in yellow, and two open cars — a green Evo Spider and a matte black Spider. Nobody here has a commercial reason to push you towards one shape, because all three cost the same and all three take the same deposit. That makes this an unusually honest page to write.

The paper case against the open car is real and it is small: about 100 kg of chassis reinforcement goes in when the roof comes out, and it costs two tenths of a second to 60 mph and three miles an hour at the top end. The paper case is also almost entirely irrelevant to a Sunday in this city, and the reasons why are more interesting than the numbers.

What the roof costs, in numbers

	Huracán Evo	Huracán Evo Spider	Huracán Spider
Roof	Fixed	Folding fabric	Folding fabric
Colour	Yellow	Green	Matte black
Engine	5.2L naturally aspirated V10 in all three
Horsepower	610	610	610
Driven wheels	Two	Two	Four
0–60 mph	3.3s	3.5s	3.4s
Top speed	202 mph	199 mph	201 mph
Seats	2	2	2
Daily rate	Identical on all three

Two tenths of a second. That is the whole penalty, and it exists because the open car carries roughly 100 kg of extra chassis reinforcement to replace the stiffness a fixed roof provides for nothing — a figure recorded in the Huracán's model specification history. A coupé's roof is a structural member. Take it away and the engineers put the stiffness back in the sills and the bulkhead, in steel and aluminium, and the car gets heavier.

Now look at the third column, because it produces the result nobody expects. The matte black Spider drives all four wheels, and traction off the line is worth more than 100 kg costs. It is a tenth quicker to 60 than the newer open car and only a tenth behind the coupé. If you want the quickest open Huracán on this street, it is the older one.

The roof itself, and the seventeen seconds it takes

A Huracán Spyder uses a canvas folding top rather than a metal one. Seventeen seconds to raise or lower, and — the part that actually matters in a city — it works at up to 31 mph, so you are not obliged to stop.

That number changes the way you use the car. A metal folding roof would mean pulling over, which in practice means people leave the roof in whatever state it started in. Being able to drop it while creeping down Sunset means the roof follows the evening rather than the plan: up on the freeway, down at the lights, up again when it gets cold coming back over the hill. Guests who take the open car use the roof three or four times a day. Guests who expect to have to stop use it twice.

Two mechanical honesties. The fabric roof is not as quiet as a fixed one at 70 mph, and behind a naturally aspirated V10 that is more obvious than it would be in a saloon. And there is a small luggage penalty: the front boot is unchanged, but with the roof stowed the space behind the seats is gone, and that space is where a Huracán coupé's second soft bag lives.

When an open roof is actually good in Los Angeles

This is the part a national rental page cannot write, and it is the whole reason to read a local one.

Los Angeles has a marine layer. From roughly May into July, a shallow deck of cloud pushes inland off the ocean overnight and sits over the coastal basin until late morning — the National Weather Service's Los Angeles and Oxnard office is the place to check it, and locals call the season June gloom. The practical consequence: an open car on the Pacific Coast Highway at ten in the morning in June is grey, damp and noticeably colder than the inland forecast implied. The same car on the same road at four in the afternoon is the best thing in the state.

So the open Huracán is a car with hours rather than days.

• Best. Late afternoon through to about nine at night, any month. Warm air, low sun, and the V10 bouncing off the buildings on Sunset with nothing over your head.
• Also excellent. Canyon roads at seven in the morning from September through November, when the marine layer is gone and the air is still cold enough to be interesting.
• Fine. Malibu and the coast between about two and six.
• Poor. Coastal mornings in late spring, and the middle of the day in August anywhere inland — the sun in an open car with black leather is not a romantic proposition at 95 degrees.
• Actively bad. The 405 at five o'clock. You are stationary, in the sun, at the eye level of a truck's wheel nuts, being photographed.

If the plan is a canyon route rather than a coastal one, our guide to the best driving roads near Los Angeles has the timings; the roof advice above maps onto all of them.

What each shape is genuinely better at

Set the stopwatch aside and this becomes an easy question with two clear answers.

The single most useful question we ask people who cannot decide: is there a camera involved, and is there a second person in it? Two yeses is a Spider, every time.

Colour, which is half the decision people forget

Because the coupé is yellow and the open cars are green and matte black, shape and colour are tangled together here in a way they would not be in a bigger fleet. Worth saying plainly:

• Yellow is the loudest of the three in daylight and the most recognisable to a stranger at fifty metres. It photographs hardest against stucco and palms, which is most of this city.
• Green is the one people stop to look at. In direct sun it is closer to lime than to anything you have seen on a road, and with the roof down against the ocean it is the most photographed car we hold.
• Matte black is the evening car. It disappears in daylight photographs and it is superb under tungsten and neon — a restaurant forecourt in West Hollywood, or headlights on Sunset after dark.

If a photographer is involved, ask them before you ask us. They will have an opinion in about four seconds and it will be right.

Still deciding between models rather than roofs? The trims are laid out in what Evo, Performante, STO and Tecnica mean, the money is in what a Lamborghini actually costs in Los Angeles, and the cross-marque argument is Ferrari against Lamborghini.

Every open-top car in the fleet →