Aside from the warm, dark-colored gunk and the sometimes extensive cleanup afterward, changing your own oil is supposed to be a simple task that saves a bit of money. But with a Lamborghini Huracan, you can throw all of that knowledge—and some cash for routine service—out the window.
Good thing Huracan owners probably have some money to spare.
An oil change on a more basic car has a few simple steps, like propping the car up, unscrewing a few bolts, popping a drain plug off and catching the old oil in a container, putting the plug back on, replacing the oil filter and putting new oil in. It doesn’t take too long, and it saves some of the money and hassle of taking the car to have someone else do it.
But things get more complicated with expensive performance cars like the Huracan, on which an oil change is said to cost about $1,000. Rental company Royalty Exotic Cars documented process in recent videos on the 16-cylinder Bugatti Veyron and this naturally aspirated V10 Huracan Spyder, showing just how many steps it takes to perform routine service on an engine like this one:
Royalty Exotic Cars told Jalopnik that fleet manager Jesse Tang, who did the oil change, said it took about four and a half hours to complete. That’s compared to about 30 minutes on a normal car.
Not only did Tang have to remove three panels and 50 bolts to even get to the drain plugs on this Huracan, but the “drain plugs” part was plural—he had to remove eight, all tightened down in a way that made them look like part of some big, elaborate puzzle underneath the car. Tang pointing them all out felt like a monochrome game of Where’s Waldo.
It became more like a regular oil change once Tang got the nine quarts out of the Huracan’s engine and replaced all of the drain plugs, because all he really had to do then was put the panels back, put the new oil and filter in, and take the car out to make sure everything was running well. But before all of that, it was a pretty exhaustive process.
As part of the income bracket that notices and sighs loudly at the store when the price of milk goes up, it would be easy to think maintenance is more expensive on luxury cars like this one because people with money to spare might not look twice at the price. But with oil changes like these, that’s obviously not the case.
[h/t CNET]
Updated: We added the time it took to do this Huracan’s oil change above, which was information we got shortly after publishing the story.