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Generally speaking, it’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slowly. But after spending a whole day driving Lamborghinis on a frozen lake about two hours northeast of Montreal, Quebec, we’ve had to rethink that. Indeed, driving a Lamborghini Huracán or an Aventador on a frozen lake in Canada or anywhere, honestly, will have you rethinking a lot of things—your financial goals, your aversion to cold, your life choices, the basic tenets of physics—but one thing seems truer than ever as you watch $ 4.5 million worth of angry-looking carbon-fiber and aluminum beasts charging around a curvy path carved into the snow, their bright Skittles-color paints contrasting strikingly against the snowy white backdrop: Rich folks really do have more fun.
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We were there to participate in Lamborghini’s Winter Accademia, a two-day ice driving program which the company has hosted in certain global markets annually since 2012 that highlights the winter-friendliness of Lamborghini’s all-wheel-drive supercars—an understandably incredulous notion to the uninitiated. And here you thought the upcoming Urus was going to be the “winter Lamborghini.”
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Heretofore held in Aspen, Colorado, the North American Winter Accademia was moved this year to this remote, privately owned Canadian property located about 75 miles from Porsche’s Camp4 Canada winter driving school on which we reported last year. Conveniently, the property features a luxurious timber-construction boutique hotel and a large lake called Lake Sacacomie that we were told while driving out on it (in an Audi Q7 with four cornfed men aboard) was covered by a three-foot-thick layer of solid ice—sufficient to hold us and the Lamborghinis and, apparently, the Q7.
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The Winter Accademia complements the Track Accademia weekend programs that Lamborghini holds at actual racetracks during summer months, when a fishing boat might be bobbing in the waves in the exact place where I enjoyed a cup or two of hot cocoa on a cushy leather couch inside a tent as large as two Winnebagos. This year, Lamborghini brought its 572-hp Huracán coupe, the 730-hp Aventador S coupe, and the new 639-hp Huracán Performante that recently rocketed us from zero to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds and cornered at 1.11 g’s during its first C/D road test. But that was on dry pavement.
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The lake might as well have been solid rock—very slippery but very solid rock—on which a well-groomed two-plus-mile pathway of varying width was plowed through the two-to-three-foot layer of snow that had accumulated on it since it froze over. The surface got slightly bumpy in places, but it was still ice—as hard, as slick, and as tricky to traverse as any patch of ice you’ve ever stumbled across before, only this patch was the size of a lake.
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Climbing in and out of these frozen-lake-hugging supercars is tricky when there’s nothing but ice outside the car; we doubt Nancy Kerrigan herself could do so gracefully. How were we going to keep supercars with up to 730 horsepower going the right direction on a surface we could hardly walk across? Well, we couldn’t have if not for two things: special studded tires and expert guidance from Lamborghini’s professional Squadra Corse instructors, who rode shotgun at all times during our multiple 15-minute sessions.
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Driving out to the first exercise, intended to teach participants to hold aggressive drift angles all the way around the aptly named Power Circle 360, we had no trouble driving the Huracán coupe normally. Once on the circle, we could initiate a drift by stabbing the brakes to transfer the weight forward while simultaneously dialing in opposite lock as the rear end quite quickly swung around. Within a second or two, we were back on the gas and straightening the wheel once again, maintaining the drift with all four wheels clawing in the same direction yet continuing to rotate around the circle. It took a few tries, but by the end even your Los Angeles-based author, who had never driven sideways in something so powerful and expensive before—at least not intentionally—felt he could have drifted around that circle all day long.
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Then came a tail-wagging slalom course and sweeping pendulum-turn exercises in something even more powerful and expensive—and, as it turns out, even more fun while sideways—the $ 425K Aventador S. The slalom was relatively easy and got us acclimated to the Aventador’s larger-than-life character before we attempted to learn the pendulum turn, a.k.a. the Scandinavian Flick, in this much wider, much more powerful, much heavier car. What could possibly go wrong? Well, it took a bit longer to master, and fortunately, the course designers provided a much wider berth and more accommodating path for the flagship Lambo. But eventually we were flicking the big bull with relative ease, and it was time to move into the much lighter, quicker-reacting, track-focused $ 279K Huracán Performante for a few rather clumsy laps of the main track, which put to the test pretty much everything we’d done theretofore. We made it through a few laps without stuffing it into a snowbank, but there were a few close grazes. More practice required.
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After gourmet vittles off the ice at a nearby clubhouse, we were back in the Huracán coupes, learning to swing the tail right, then left, then right again on an hourglass-shaped figure-eight course. Nailed it.
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For anyone wondering what happens in the event that a driver loses control and plows into a snowbank, apparently Lamborghini has thought of this, too, so the answer is not much. As it turns out, snowbanks are softer than those made of dirt and rock. We witnessed a few vehicles stuff a couple of wheels or the entire nose into the snow, sometimes requiring a tow vehicle—a large Ram pickup—to chug out to the marooned car and give it a tug. But no cars seemed any the worse for it, and the only damage was to the drivers’ egos.
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As we became more comfortable with the maneuvers, we were better able to discern how the icy surface amplifies certain innate handling attributes of the cars—particularly the quickness and the hypercommunicative nature of the steering, the effects of weight transfer from rear to front and side to side, and the rear-wheel bias of the all-wheel-drive systems available on all Lamborghinis. I imagine that exploring these limits would be possible in dry weather on asphalt, although the speeds—and the consequences for getting it wrong—would be much, much higher. This was a great place to hone one’s inner gyroscope, and these were great cars to do it in.
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Our car-control skills had developed by the time we were back on the track in the Performantes again. We executed powerslides that would make Bo and Luke Duke proud and Scandinavian Flicks that set us charging out of corners like a hero. Our speed topped 70 mph on some of the straighter sections, and if 70 mph doesn’t sound fast to you, you haven’t driven a Lamborghini on ice.
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- Dashing through the Snow in a 603-HP Mercedes-AMG
- Winter Driving Guide: How to Survive Snow and Ice
- Lamborghini Research: Specs, Reviews, Pricing, Photos, and More
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For those who want to try it, Accademia courses are classifed as intermediate level within Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse driving and racing programs, above the beginner program, called Esperienza, that is open to prospective and first-time customers but below the Pilota program, which targets prospective racers. As such, both the Winter and Track Accademia programs are offered only to current Lamborghini owners who have already completed an Esperienza event and are willing to shell out $ 9500 for the two-day program. That sum doesn’t include airfare but, this year, included a morning of dog sledding on the departure day. Spouses were welcome but couldn’t drive unless they were also registered as participants. With only a couple dozen total attendees each year, the Winter Accademia is both exclusive and popular enough to have a waiting list. And after completing it ourselves, we can understand why.
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