11 minute read
Lamborghini EVO RWD Spyder
By Maarten Hoffmann, Senior Motoring Editor
I review over 52 cars per year, all delivered direct from the manufacturers so keen are they to be featured within the pages of this august publication. Obviously, as a dedicated petrol head, l am quite keen when the supercars arrive, and Lamborghini rarely fail me. Mother Nature on the other hand can be a horror. As was the case when the new Huracan EVO RWD Spyder arrived as the clue is in the name – RWD – Rear Wheel Drive.
In this hardcore model they have done away with the Audi inspired Quattro system – designed to keep the car on the road and the driver alive. The barnstorming 610bhp engine is direct drive through to the rear wheels only. Mother Nature threw a curveball by ushering in a major storm with permanent driving rain and 70mph winds forcing me to spend much of the week looking through the side window on every corner. Blimey, it was fun.
I reviewed the Quattro Huracan last year and it is a great car – totally barking but great fun. Much of this delight is supplied by the 4x4 system that allows you to pretend to be a mad expert racer but actually, your gran could drive it. Take away the 4x4 system and all hell breaks loose and you need to really drive the car – just like the old days. I liked the old days. The 610bhp engine with 413lb ft of torque drives the rear wheels via a seven-speed duel-clutch transmission, and the little blips through the box are an engineering joy. The lack of 4x4 does slightly dampen the 0-62 timing but 3.3 seconds is hardly sluggish, and it will still hit 201mph, if you have the cojones to do that. You also lose the four-wheel steering and the torque vectoring but you also lose weight and, as weight is the enemy of performance, all good news.
You still get the three driving modes – Strada, Sport and Corsa (road, sport and track) and l tend to drive everywhere in Sport as the noise is sensational, the pick up off the line is earth shattering and you need to be a certified mental patient to drive anywhere in Track mode – except on the track.
This is the slightly deranged cousin of the Audi R8 but if the R8 is your dear old Mum, the Huracan RWD is the bonkers cousin who’s always in trouble, always up to mischief and will end up getting nicked.
Inside the difference is stark, The EVO is every bit Lamborghini and offers you Italian theatre – from the windscreen stretching over the front axle, the low slung seating position and the crazy hexagonal detail everywhere you look. Then you flip the red fighter jet starter button and the earth moves before the
TECH STUFF
MODEL TESTED: Huracan EVO RWD Spyder ENGINE: 5.2-litre V10 POWER: 602 bhp SPEED: 0-62mph 3.3 seconds TOP: 201 mph ECONOMY: 20.5 mpg combined PRICE FROM: £164,400
car does. The massive V10 5.2-litre power plant sits right behind your head and you feel a permanent, and rather sexy, hum until you open the taps – then it is the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again. Charging horses frothing at the mouth, murderous soldiers aboard, screaming with bloodlust and waving their razor sharp sabres at all and sundry.
Now that would be under normal, dry conditions and not, as previously explained, that week’s horrendous conditions. In the driving rain, getting that power down is next to impossible, with the rear weaving back and forth as if waving to the car behind whilst l wrestle to keep it vaguely on a straight line. It fi nally bites some dry tarmac, l open up and here we go again. Open up on a slight bend and you are facing the other way in an instant – much to the shock of the driver behind you and the whiplashed face of your passenger. Then comes a challenge l feel must be conquered – the roundabout. Or to be more precise, getting round the roundabout without steering through the side window. Why oh why do they not fit windscreen wipers on the passenger window as it really would make sense as that is my fi eld of vision.
I can attest to the fact that on the east side of the Crawley Town football stadium roundabout is a house with a rather lovely garden; on the roundabout at Pease Pottage above the M23 they have started cutting back the trees; and why oh why on the Ovingdean roundabout has St Dunstan’s Home for Blind Ex-Servicemen got the best views in Brighton?
You see, the point is you see so much more going sideways around such roundabouts and that includes the frozen petrifi ed terror on my girlfriend’s face – err, sorry, ex-girlfriend! We will not mention the roundabout on the A27 at Worthing...
It stopped raining for an hour and this thing grips like nothing l have ever driven. As for the acceleration, it feels as though l could look back and see the tarmac rippled.
PLATINUM
There are, of course, a few oddities. Left in Strada and the gearbox in auto the car will happily change up itself, but cruise through a roundabout and squeeze the power and you get nothing; the engine down at 1000rpm and the gearbox in seventh. Why does it not change down? This might have been designed by the chap who chose the colour combo – baby blue body, red roof and dark brown seats – really, l thought the Italians were renowned for their taste and style. Still, the choice of colours is yours and there are many.
This is a pure drivers’ car and it makes no compromise. Without the Quattro system, is shaves 33kg off the weight and nearly £34,000 off the price. The balance of the car is superb, the steering magically precise and the cornering power (in the dry) legendary.
Having said all that, if l owned a race track this would undeniably be the car for me but for all other purposes, l would pay the extra and keep the Quattro system as in the wet, it is close to undriveable. But god, did l smile, laugh and hoot.
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THE RISE OF THE FEMALE BILLIONAIRE Although money is not the be-all and end-all, it is a marker of success within business. There are many women doing incredible jobs that will never make them rich, whether it be for the good of the community, charity work or research but here we take a look at the rise of the female billionaires.
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It is recorded that there are 234 female billionaires in the world with half from the US, but Europe and China are well represented. Although it is mainly men that are impressed by such numbers, it is a stark reminder to them that women are just as capable in this area as men - given the chance. We throw the word billionaire around in a cavalier fashion these days but just think about that for a moment. It is a thousand million. A million is quite a large amount of money to have but a thousand of them is somewhat inconceivable to many, including me. And of course, the more you have the more you make as in normal times, just sitting there it makes money for itself through investments. If it was left in the bank even at today’s ridiculous interest rates, it would earn £40m a year. Many of the ladies listed inherited their fortune but it will be what they do with it that will count. It aff ords them the opportunity to really make a diff erence and, one would hope, that they progress the advance of women’s rights and create opportunities for women to succeed outside of men.
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FEMALE EMPOWERMENT
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Victoria Cleverley
I am Chief of Staff in the Markets division. My role is to partner with the Markets’ CEO and to be a trusted and respected advisor.I am driven by helping others succeed and am thrilled when this value is realised – my role really does succeed when others succeed. There is no one trait or function that describes what I do – which is why we often hear the role being called ‘a catch all’. My role is to ensure the division is effective, efficient and most importantly, creating long-term sustainable value for all our customers and communities when they need us most. As Chief of Staff I am in a critical position to help leadership navigate - I connect the dots between the work that we do and the impact that it has on the firm and importantly, the economies and society in which we operate. NatWest
Laila Page
I am responsible for embedding purpose across NatWest, following our new CEO setting out her strategy to become a purpose led bank earlier this year. Our purpose is to champion potential, and help people, families and businesses to thrive – I firmly believe that as a bank we have a genuine role to play in creating value for society. We’re just at the beginning of our journey to become truly purpose led and my job is to create the environment within the bank for this to take hold and really thrive, which involves listening, building capability and also highlighting the great role modelling that I see every day by my colleagues. NatWest
25 We are supporting senior women to thrive through the power of transformational connections to drive sustainable business development diversity experience out perform by 21%. For ethnic and cultural diversity, there was a 33% likelihood of out performance.Whilst we can see improvements in tackling gender balance, there is some way to go to genuinely empower the female economy. The opportunity is clear from two recent research reports. The Women in Financial Services 2020 report by Oliver Wyman outlined a potential missed revenue opportunity amounting to $700 billion from better serving women as customers. The 2019 Rose Review identified a £250 billion opportunity for the UK economy if women started and scaled up businesses at the same rate as men. With targeted interventions focused on both outcomes of personal and business development, we genuinely believe that Reaching Further not only can and does have an incredible impact on the women that it supports, but will also help drive sustainable business development. It stretches thinking, sparks imaginations and creates something quite different. Our aim is to use the power of transformational connections to enable both personal and business development. By bringing and sharing insight, providing access to role models and encouraging a one bank approach, we are supporting senior women to thrive and creating the conditions for sustainable growth. WHAT IS IT? Reaching Further is an initiative involving about 100 senior women with influence from across the bank, each nominated by their business area. Reaching Further has already begun to leverage the banks resources, tackle mutual challenges, and take action to better serve our customers and communities and grow the business. Reaching Further is specifically targeted at senior women who have influence for the simple reason that to go further in achieving greater diversity balance internally, and rising female economic empowerment externally, we need to be targeted. We firmly believe that we can support the female economy, through the power of transformational connections. Bringing senior women with influence together we can create the platform to enable them to collaborate to make a difference. Not only does this support and motivate us collectively, it drives business development and better still, more creative decision making.There are many brilliant initiatives and employee-led networks already in NatWest for learning, development and connecting, and we are privileged to work for an organisation with phenomenal women in many leadership roles, from CEO and CFO downwards. SO WHY CREATE REACHING FURTHER? We all know there is a material opportunity for banks to drive longterm organisational performance by increasing both the attraction and retention of women and providing more opportunities for those women to progress into senior roles. McKinsey’s research on diversity showed that companies with more diverse gender, culture and ethnicity outperform companies that don’t support diversity. The research found that companies in the top quartile for gender WHY REACHING FURTHER?
