I drove the $324,000 Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica. It's classy, loud, and always attracts a crowd.

• The Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica is one of the final variants of the Huracán supercar, which debuted in 2013.
• We drove a $323,995 version of the car with Blu Notte paint and honeycomb patters all over.

I walked back into the local donut shop after showing more than a dozen customers my loaner Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica. When I sat down, a man at another table said: "I don't know what made us get donuts today, but I'm so glad we did. My kids will remember this for the rest of their lives."

That, I think, is the magic of driving a Lamborghini: It means the world to the people around you.

The Tecnica is a new derivative of the Lamborghini Huracán, which debuted in 2013 as a replacement for the Gallardo — a car that set sales records for Lamborghini and became a pop-culture staple. The original Huracán came with a 5.2-liter V10 engine, 600 horsepower, and styling that held up so well, it looks mostly the same today.

Nine years later, the Huracán is near the end of its life. The Tecnica is one of its final variants and slots in under the Huracán STO, which starts at $330,000 and acts as a race car for the street: stiff, low, fast, and featuring the bare minimum of creature comforts, because race cars aren't meant to be comfortable.

The Tecnica, which starts at $239,000, adds those comforts back in. It shares the STO's 631-horsepower, naturally aspirated V10 engine, but has a smaller rear wing, stylish little flares around its headlights, and an interior that's less "race car" and more "bought an expensive suite at the car race." Its power funnels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

How it looks and feels

My loaner Tecnica came in a coat of Blu Notte paint — a step between royal and navy, with so much depth that it felt like staring into the world's clearest lake — and totaled $323,995, including fees and optional features. It had honeycomb patterns all over, from its air and engine vents to its 20-inch "Damiso" wheels. (If honeycombs aren't your thing, you can pick other shapes to adorn your car.)

Seven giant honeycombs made up each of the car's rims, almost like a giant rotary phone, and the car's carbon-fiber accents and black roof blended beautifully with its deep-blue paint. It wasn't striking in the stereotypical sense of a Lamborghini — harsh, bright colors — but in a classy, understated way.

Inside, the Tecnica was full of black suede and white accents, from strips of leather to seat stitching. The black-suede roof, rear shelf, and seats had little white honeycombs etched into all of them, while white stitching on the seat bolsters read "TECNICA" in all caps.

The seats are snug and built for a specific body type; my hips and thighs were a little too wide, while my 6-foot-tall husband said he needed more headroom. Both of those complaints are common for supercars, which are kind of like catsuits — hard to get in, but once you do, they hold everything in place comfortably.

The startup screen behind the steering wheel had a giant "Huracán Tecnica" logo underlined by the colors of the Italian flag, both of which appeared atop a deep black-and-white honeycomb pattern. A chrome version of Lamborghini's iconic nameplate — just its name, in cursive — sat on the dashboard, framed by panels of black carbon fiber and white leather.

How it drives

The Huracán Tecnica has three drive modes: strada, sport, and corsa. ("Strada" means street, and "corsa" means "race." "Sport" is that step in the middle, between the more polite street settings and the harsher, louder ones meant for the racetrack.)

You flick between the modes using a little red button at the bottom of the steering wheel, and each mode changes the color of your digital speedometer and tachometer accordingly: Street is white, strada is orange, and corsa is red.

Strada is a smoother, less aggressive drive mode, and it made my life so easy. I'd fire up the car and it would immediately quiet down, not disturbing all the neighbors around me. I'd flick it into sport as soon as I left the neighborhood, kicking on the car's deeper rumble and angrier personality.

In sport mode, every stoplight is an event. Each of the car's harsh downshifts feel like the flick of a blender, if blender blades moved forward and backward instead of in a circle. With each vzzzzrrrmm of the transmission shifting into a lower gear, the car lurches and your head bounces off the back of the headrest.

It's dramatic, but that's the point. You buy a Lamborghini for the show.

Driving the Tecnica on the street alone — which is what I did for the weekend I had it — means never feeling what it can really do. It glues itself to the ground, it brakes like it has iron claws for tires, and its steering wheel is hefty but not heavy. The car responds to every twitch and turn you make, but you never struggle to make them.

Drive a Huracán within the speed limit and it won't get out of sorts, because it's too capable for that. You have to take it to the track to really appreciate it.

What a lot of people don't tell you about driving supercars is how tedious it is on the street. The Tecnica is wide and low to the ground, meaning it's easy to scratch the front splitter and bottom of the car on curb stops, speed bumps, rough roads, or driveways.

My Tecnica had an optional $4,100 nose-lift system, which raises and lowers the car's front end a few inches on command to help navigate those situations. It's a must-buy on a supercar like this.

I'll lift the nose five or six times on a 15-minute drive across town, including when I leave the driveway, turn onto a road where the surface changes, and enter a parking lot. Because the lift takes a few seconds, you have to see potential road changes and be proactive — react too late in traffic and you won't have time to raise the car.

Even with a lift, the Tecnica is low. Entering and exiting parking lots and driveways is always careful and slow, but I love that about supercars. To drive them in everyday situations, you have be willing to take care of them (or ignore the expensive damage you cause with each scrape).

Only one aspect of driving the Tecnica regularly gave me pause: the exhaust note. In sport mode with automatic shifting on, the Tecnica got really deep and guttural at around 37 mph and at certain shift points. But the exhaust sound was hit or miss otherwise — and often, it was a lot quieter and less obtrusive than I, a Lamborghini driver, wanted to be.

The easy way to fix this is by manually shifting with the paddles, which lets you terrorize the whole town by riding down a highway feeder road in second gear. I'd like a little more of that attitude with automatic mode on, too.

But for me, Lamborghinis are less about my driving experience and more about others' overall experience. I let dozens of people see and take photos with the car while I had it, even if they were a little too tall to fit sometimes.

Everyone — children, teens, college students, and adults — was shocked to not only see a Lamborghini, but also touch it. One minute, a kid in a parking lot was telling his father not to take photos of the car because the owner might not like it. The next, I was helping him take photos in it.

The Tecnica is something people will always be shocked about — not just because it's a $330,000 car, but because it's a $330,000 Lamborghini. No matter what it says about society that we're all obsessed with things most of us can't afford, Lamborghini made itself into a brand we equate with fashion and success. We want to experience it because we've grown up knowing a Lamborghini means we made it.

When I had the Tecnica, it took 10 minutes to show entire groups of people the car, and they all told me it was one of the coolest things they'd ever done. In 15 years, maybe those kids will return to the donut shop with their dad and say: "Remember that Lamborghini we saw here?" Maybe they'll return in a Lamborghini of their own.

The Tecnica gave so many people dreams and joy that weekend — and to me, that was the best part.