Huracán vs Aventador: V10 or V12, and What Each Is Like on a Los Angeles Road

What differs	Huracán / Aventador	What kind of number that is
Engine	5.2-litre V10 / 6.5-litre V12	Both naturally aspirated, both mid-mounted. Neither has a turbo.
Power	610–640 PS / 700–780 CV	Huracán Evo RWD to Evo AWD; Aventador LP 700-4 of 2011 to the Ultimae of 2021.
Acceleration	3.3 s to 60 mph (Evo RWD) / 2.8 s to 100 km/h (SVJ, Ultimae)	Our own figure for the yellow car against Lamborghini’s for the last V12s. Different rulers, a few tenths apart.
Gearbox	Dual-clutch / single-clutch ISR	The larger difference on a real road: one shifts invisibly, the other announces itself.
Doors	Conventional / scissor	The Aventador’s open upwards. In a parking structure that is a feature; in a photograph it is the whole picture.
Built	2014–2024 / 2011–2022	Replaced by the Temerario and the Revuelto, both hybrids.
In Los Angeles	$1,799 a day / —	The Evo coupé and the two Spyders are on their pages; the Aventador is not in the fleet.

Ten cylinders against twelve, and what that does past eight thousand

Both engines are the old kind: no turbocharger, no electric motor, and a redline most road cars never approach. The Huracán’s V10 makes its power in the last two thousand revolutions, and the noise changes character on the way up, from a hard mechanical thrum to a shriek that arrives before the car does. The Aventador’s V12 does the same thing an octave lower and with a bigger chest: 770 CV at 8,500 rpm in the SVJ, against the 640 PS the Huracán Evo took from the Performante.

The number that matters on a Los Angeles road is not the peak. It is how much of the engine you can use before the speed becomes a problem, and here the V10 wins by being smaller. Third gear on Mulholland uses the whole Huracán; third gear in an Aventador uses the driver’s nerve. The V12 is the better sound at a standstill and the better sound from the pavement. The V10 is the better sound from the driver’s seat, because you get to hear all of it.

The gearbox is a bigger difference than the engine

Ask anyone who has driven both and the first answer is not the cylinder count. The Aventador kept a single-clutch automated gearbox for its whole life, the one Lamborghini calls ISR, and it shifts the way a racing car’s does: a pause, a jolt, and the next gear arriving like a door slamming. In Corsa mode at full throttle it is one of the great sensations in a road car. In traffic on the 405 at five in the afternoon it is a series of small head-nods that never quite stops.

The Huracán has a dual-clutch, which pre-selects the next gear and swaps in a few hundredths of a second without interrupting the drive. Nothing happens between gears, in either direction. That is why the smaller car is the one you can drive to dinner in the same mood you left in, and why a first Lamborghini is nearly always a Huracán: it asks nothing of you in a queue and everything of you on a canyon road, which is the right way round.

Scissor doors, sightlines and a Sunset Boulevard valet

The Aventador’s doors open upwards, the way every Lamborghini flagship’s have since the Countach, and they are the reason the car draws a crowd before the engine starts. They are also practical in exactly one place, a tight parking structure, and impractical in most others: low garages, a valet who has never done it, a kerb you cannot see. The car is wide enough that a Beverly Hills lane feels like a decision, and the view out of the back is a slot between two engine covers.

The Huracán’s doors open like a car’s. It is narrower, the nose is lower and shorter, and the rear three-quarter view exists. On the open Spyder you can see everything with the roof down, which is the practical case for the Spyder that nobody makes. The Huracán still stops a pavement; it just lets you leave it.

What each is like on a Los Angeles road

Mulholland at seven in the morning. The Huracán, and specifically the rear-drive Evo: the lightest steering of the family, a tail that moves a little under power and comes straight back, and a size that lets you use the road rather than survive it. The Aventador is quicker on paper and slower here, because most of the corners are narrower than its confidence.

The Pacific Coast Highway at the end of the afternoon. The Evo Spyder, roof stowed, in either drive layout. The V12 roadster does this too, with more noise and a great deal more attention, and on the straight run past Malibu it is the better piece of theatre. Where it loses is the turn-around: the Huracán U-turns where the Aventador reverses three times.

The 405, the 10, and the hotel forecourt. Both are fine on the freeway; the dual-clutch makes the Huracán the one you would choose for a week with meetings in it. The forecourt is the Aventador’s argument, the doors going up while somebody films. The Huracán arrives well; the Aventador arrives.

Angeles Crest. The all-wheel-drive Evo Spyder, which sends the Performante’s 640 PS through four wheels and is the quickest of the three here off the line. That is the closest thing in the fleet to the V12’s shove, and it comes with a roof you can take out.

Which Aventador people mean

The name covered eleven years and four main cars, and the figures move with the year. The LP 700-4 of 2011 launched the carbon-fibre monocoque, the ISR gearbox and 700 CV. The Aventador S of 2017 went to 740 CV, 0–100 km/h in 2.9 seconds and four-wheel steering. The SVJ of 2018 is the one the record books mean: 770 CV, 2.8 seconds, more than 350 km/h, and 6:44.97 around the Nürburgring, a production-car record when it was set. The LP 780-4 Ultimae of 2021 closed the line at 780 CV, 355 km/h, 350 coupés and 250 roadsters, which Lamborghini itself describes as the last pure naturally aspirated V12 before hybridisation.

Its successor is the Revuelto: the V12 kept, three electric motors added, 1,015 CV and 2.5 seconds to 100 km/h, with a dual-clutch at last. The Huracán’s successor is the Temerario, a twin-turbo V8 hybrid with 920 CV. Both are on this page for the record; neither is the point of it.

The Huracán you can drive in Los Angeles

The yellow coupé is an Evo RWD: 610 PS through the rear wheels and the purest steering of the family. The green car is the same trim with the roof taken out, an Evo RWD Spyder. The matte black car is an Evo Spyder driving all four wheels, the 640-4, and the quickest of the three off the line. All three take the same rate, $1,799 a day, and the same deposit, so the money is out of the decision and the roof and the colour are the whole of it. Every Huracán for rent here is on the Huracán page, side by side, and the trims are taken apart in Evo, Performante, STO and Tecnica.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

The Huracáns take the same rate and the same $2,000 refundable deposit, held on the primary driver’s card rather than charged and back 5–7 business days after the car returns. The Protection plan is priced per day off the deposit band, and every Huracán sits in the top one; your own qualifying policy works instead. The live calendars and rates are on the Lamborghini page, and what the rest of the bill is made of has its own page.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP, where it is at the terminal when you walk out — half that for one direction. Under twenty-five there is a young-driver fee per day, the higher of the two we charge. Mileage, fuel and the rest are in the terms.