Geneva Motor Show: Raging bull squares off with the prancing horse

In the past, we'd have been excited beyond belief if Lamborghini and Ferrari both brought big-hitting new cars to the Geneva motor show. In 2017 though, such multi-cylindered excess seems a touch tiresome, if still impressive from an engineering sense.

Raging bull

Lamborghini's Huracan Peformante arrives with a touch of controversy swirling in its wake. The 640hp V10 mid-engined supercar smashed the production car lap record at the sacred Nurburgring test track in Germany last week, knocking five seconds off the time set by Porsche's 918 Spyder. Some claimed that Lambo had doctored the official footage of the lap though, but it seems to have simply been an editing issue, rather than flat out cheating.

The car is certainly impressive whatever its lap time — lighter than a standard Huracan at 1,300kg, with a massive rear wing and active aerodynamics, which are designed to make it easier to thread through a corner at high speeds. "This new car represents the powerhouse of Lamborghini DNA and innovation, and a 360-degree approach to creating class-leading super sports cars," said Stefano Domenicali, the boss of Lamborghini. "It illustrates the pinnacle of Lamborghini V10 production car performance to date."

Prancing horse

Ferrari didn’t bother with lap records or anything like that. It just casually brought along one of the most powerful road cars it’s ever launched, second only to the insane hybrid LaFerrari. The 812 Superfast is the latest front-engined V12 GT from Modena although it’s not quite a new car, more of a thorough do-over of the old F12 Berlinetta, but this 812 Superfast is packing a 6.5-litre V12 neutron bomb between its front wheels. 800hp is the magic figure, plus 718Nm of torque all fired to the back wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox, whose cries for mercy we can almost hear from here.

Ferrari claims a 0-100kmh time of 2.9 seconds and a top speed in excess of 330km/h, which is pretty much the same as what the old F12 was capable of. That either means that Ferrari is holding back on its claims, waiting to unleash even more devastating times from independent testers, or we really have reached the physics limit of what can be done with rear-wheel drive and traction control. Answers on a postcard to the Via Emilia, Modena please.

Helping to control all of that power is a new electric power steering system, used for the first time on a production Ferrari. The Modena press office claims that “in accordance with Ferrari’s uncompromising engineering approach, is used to fully exploit the potential of the car’s performance and, through the complete integration with all the electronic vehicle dynamics controls.”

It’s backed up by the latest version of Ferrari’s Side Slip Control, which lets you get all Fangio-stylee with the rear end but helps you gather everything up again before you end up in the fence and also gets the steering to nudge your hands in the right direction to control a powerslide. Drift Mode in an 800h Ferrari? Sign us up… There’s also rear-wheel steering, which Ferrari calls Virtual Short Wheelbase, which makes the 812 more stable at high speed, but more agile at low-to-medium speeds. Easier to park, too.

If you’re expecting any change from €550,000 once Irish VAT and vehicle registration tax have been paid, well, you’re probably out of luck…