The thing I like most about cars is the hardware beneath the skin. I love getting a look at how all the mechanical and electrical systems come together to form a beautifully integrated system. But though I enjoy looking at cars’ guts, I’d prefer those guts to be carefully removed, not spilled all over the roadway, as was the case with these two ~$200,000 Lamborghini Huracans that crashed in Denver. Check it out.
The Autopian rarely blogs on weekends in an attempt to keep our small team from burnout, but weekend content will begin here soon. We’ll start with articles that I personally struggle with: simple, short, non-deep-dive blogs like this one about a crash in Denver on Thursday night. Per the Denver Fire Department, this incident and the subsequent fire that broke out in one of the vehicles happened — rather conveniently — right in front of the fire station:
Public Service Announcement: Drive Safe this weekend. Lots of events downtown. Last night 2 Lamborghinis were involved in an accident that resulted in one vehicle catching fire in the front yard of Station 1. Fortunately no one was injured.
The Denver Post alleges a witness account of hoonery, and states that Denver police arrested the men to investigate whether they were driving while under the influence, and also because they appeared to have been driving recklessly. From the Denver Post:.
Based on a witness account, the drivers were stopped for a red traffic light on Speer, revving the engines, and both “accelerated as fast as possible” when the light turned green, crashing in short order, according to an arrest affidavit.
[One car] burst into flames…
[…]
Both men were arrested on investigation of driving under the influence of drugs, reckless driving and speed exhibition, police said.
It’s not clear whether the purple car had its door ripped off during the crash or after as some kind of occupant extraction/blaze-smothering strategy, but either way: The thing looks bad. The mangled door, the smashed hood, the heavily dented rear quarter panel. It’s not good.
But it’s not nearly as rough as the Huracan in the top photo. Let’s have a closer look at this rear end:
Hop in the comments and see if you can help me identify some of these parts. Obviously, you can see the valve covers on the V10 engine, and some kind of intake pipe. Is that the accessory drive there at the front? What about that weird snowman-shaped thing — is that a coolant bottle or some kind of vacuum reservoir? Also: On the bottom right, is that the headlight?
It’s a dark photo, so it’s hard to tell.
This seems like a good excuse for me to pull up a picture of the Huracan’s body, which Lamborghini calls a “Hybrid Chassis” built largely out of aluminum, but featuring a nice carbon-fiber center tunnel and rear bulkhead. Lamborghini says the Huracan has an “aluminum and thermoplastic resin body [sitting] on a lightweight hybrid chassis in aluminum and carbon fiber,” though “sitting on” is maybe not the best way to put it, as it’s really all integrated. Check that out above.
The carbon fiber tunnel adds to overall stiffness, and the rear bulkhead gives a nice, strong structure on which to mount the rear section, which contains the engine and suspension. Plus, that carbon fiber wall acts as a strong barrier against intrusion of all that heavy hardware in the back. YouTuber B is for Build gives a great look at that rear carbon fiber bulkhead — it’s quite fascinating the way it’s integrated into the otherwise-aluminum chassis:
Should you be averse to moving pictures, here are some static photos from someone on eBay selling an entire Huracan body shell for about $9,000:
What’s great about the listing is that it appears to show where the rear aluminum structure mounts to the rear bulkhead, with a photo of the attached rear structure (below) and the removed rear structure showing the tabs (above):
Here are a couple more photos of the structure:
Anyway, I feel a strong desire to dive a little deeper into this thing’s crashworthiness. I know people who can tell me lots of insightful stuff about why the Huracan in the photo above ended up like it did, how Lamborghini designs the structure to strategically break away to keep occupants safe, and on and on. But again, I struggle writing short posts, so at the risk of my colleague Jason getting mad at me for going too deep, we’ll leave it here.
Here’s the headline from David Tracy’s next big story series: Project Wrecked-um
“Here’s My Very First Look At The Two Wrecked Lambos I Bought In Denver”
Lol. “Project Wrecked-um” should have been the title to DT’s Australian Adventure.
It is kinda fascinating/creepy that in minutes I can find the original article, the names of the guys, one’s LinkedIn page, info about the gun the other one had. Further, as the father of a new driver, I am glad my kid was nowhere near their antics!
Overweight lardass SUV-sized cars whose drivers can’t even control the power produced by their massive high-strung engines? Why am I not at all surprised at this being the result?
It is impressive that no one died though.
Yeah 2 lamborghinis, not sure this is your middle aged beer drinking dad driving accident. More likely 2 techbros with more dollars than sense buying supercars before even driving a regular car thinking hey no problem I drive these all the time in video games.
“Bro, check out my sick ride yo!”
“DUUUUUDE! BRO! I got one too!”
“Wanna’ race Bro?”
“Yolo, Broseph!”
*a loud crash is heard 45 seconds later*
One of them appears to be a realtor. Not sure about the other, but maybe something related to defense contracting.
As someone who wields Holmatro Pentheon tools from time to time, here is a pet peeve of mine. Dentists do extractions. Firefighters do extrications.
Looks like it was hit by a Huracan….
The night is calling, I have to go
The wolf is hungry, he runs the show
He’s licking his lips, he’s ready to win
On the hunt tonight for love at first sting
Here I am
Rock you like a Huracan
Denver resident brace themselves for the approaching Huracan Guido.
David would probably have a better chance of gluing both of these into one workable car than the 2 utes filled with spiders.
Wait a second! Aren’t you s’posed to be in Oztrailia?
(Sometin’s fishy here . . . )
I am still astounded by the integrity of the occupant compartments in both these cars. Very impressive crashworthiness if you ask me.
“The thing I like most about cars is the hardware beneath the skin.”
Thiiiis! I wish some of these supercar manufacturers would sell models with transparent (or no) exterior panels, just to see all the chassis and drivetrain components.
This might be Denver’s first ever Lambo vs Lambo wreck. Congratulations, assholes!
What does one do with a wrecked Huracan body shell that makes it potentially worth $9,000?
You give it an engine from a junkyard beetle, some plywood bodywork, and get featured on Shitbox Showdown?
In this type of application it’s not plywood it is naturally sourced carbon fiber.
Artisanal organic carbon fiber lovingly harvested from hemp stalks which expired naturally due to a ionizing thermal event (lightning)
Isn’t it missing a big chunk of the structure, though?
Yeah, weekend content is nice but not at the expense of a small staff potentially burning out so limited or non-existent weekend content is fine until staffing is sorted accordingly. And yes, please, to some good deep dives into topics such as the Lamborghini structural engineering even though 99.999% of us will never ever drive a Lamborghini.
I agree completely. No weekend posts is just fine with me both to save yourselves some sanity and to keep me from further distractions when I’m supposed to be doing something else on a Saturday.
Another vote here for no weekend material. You folks need a break and I need the weekend to catch up on less important reading such as the news. Also, I frequently use the weekend to read (or re-read more carefully) Autopian articles I only had time to browse during the week.
While I have minimal interest in news about new hypercar releases, reading about the engineering that underpins them is definitely up my alley. TIL the structure of one of these is designed to separate in a crash. Fascinating
I figured that was Tracy’s indirect way of saying they’re hiring weekend writers. I could be wrong though.
Pissing contest. What have we learned?
Still not enough piss to put out two fires, apparently.
We have learned that Daddy will buy us another one.
Sweet fuck all would be my guess.
David, if Torch ever approves this deep dive, I’d also like to know how well an obliterated Lambo actually runs after being resurrected as many of them are. There’s usually an “it just never drove the same” feeling after major collision repair work on any car, which I can only suspect is amplified by the absurdly high performance standards these things are built to.
Idiot’s should not own nice things!
If they weren’t rentals, then they were leased.
A new saying I just made up. “A dollar is made up of 100 cents. But it seems the more dollars one has the less sense (cents) he/she has”
On a different note how about an app that changes the post of any sexual mention ( he, she) to the current political correct word of the day? It would make millions. Or just create a rule in your email dictionary that changes it.