What Are You Doing For Movember?
Scotty Reiss
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How about taking a spin in a Lamborghini?
If you’ve noticed guys letting their facial hair grow and discussing PSA levels this month, it’s because it’s Movember — men’s health awareness month.
If the facial hair and public health discussion of private medical information isn’t enough to get men’s attention, a roaring Lamborghini — or an entire fleet of them — may be just the ticket to get guys to shift their focus to their own health. And many are getting behind the wheel of a mustachioed Lamborghini to put the point across.
The candy color array of mustachioed Lamborghinis. Photo: Scotty Reiss
The Movember Bull Run Is Designed to Spark Conversation
Each year, the Italian supercar brand brings together thousands of owners for Bull Runs that take place around the world. These rallies are named for the bull on the brand’s logo, and designed to drive the message home: Men’s health matters. I attended this year’s official Bull Run, a parade of more than 40 Lamborghinis as they drove from from Austin to Wimberley, TX and back. Each was adorned with a curly mustache and admirably restrained both in speed and sound as the candy-colored group of super cars wound through Hill Country streets.
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In town, people stopped on sidewalks, smiling and capturing the moment on their phones. On the highways, trucks drew along side the group to capture the spectacle, drivers giving us thumbs up and huge smiles.
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The Lamborghini parade behind us. Photo: Cameron Reiss
The Movember Mission: Getting Men to Talk About Health Care
Movember started nearly 20 years ago as an effort to draw attention to men’s health issues, especially prostate cancer, testicular cancer and now, suicide prevention. To show support and create awareness, men started to grow in their beards for the month of November.
As the mission grew, so did the focus on suicide prevention, which grew out of personal connections of the founders who lost friends to suicide; in fact, 3 out of 4 suicides are men, that’s 100 suicides a day, said Mark Hedstrom of Movember.
What’s the biggest challenge? Getting men to talk, Hedstrom said. Men don’t like to talk about their personal issues; it’s not fitting with the macho image that many men have of themselves, their friends and their colleagues. There’s hardly better way to open the conversation than staging it around drool-worthy supercars.
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The view from the driver’s seat in the Huracán. Photo: Scotty Reiss
What It’s Like to Drive a Lamborghini Huracán EVO
We arrived at the Commodore Perry Estate for the Movember kick-off, the hotel’s driveway filled with 40 various Lamborghini models in red, silver, yellow, blue, purple and more. A team was applying mustache stickers to the hoods of the cars while owners were enjoying coffee inside.
Soon, owners took their seats behind the wheel and cranked up the cars; it was time to parade. This was only my second time behind the wheel of a Lamborghini, and still I needed to walk through just how to drive this car. It’s not easy, nor is it intuitive — unless you’re a race engineer who expects everything to be completely logical with the goal of going as efficiently fast as possible.
First of all, as you might with any other rocket, you have to lift a red ignition guard to push the start button. I got that much easily. What wasn’t instantly obvious was how to put it in drive; there’s not a gear shift or drive button (there are buttons for reverse, park and “M” for manual, though). To put it in drive, pull the right paddle on the steering column and boom, you’re in drive.
Also unique is that there are no stalks for turn signals or windshield wipers; those are controlled with buttons on the steering wheel. Also on the steering wheel is the drive mode selector: Strada, Sport and Corsa. Strada, or street, is a more comfortable, less growly street mode. Sport raises the decibel output and tightens the drive experience. And Corsa, or race mode, takes it up a bit more and is only available using paddle shifters.
Related: Thanks to Volkswagen, I Learned to Drive a Manual Transmission
My daughter Cameron served as my co-pilot for the Bull Run. Photo: Cameron Reiss
Learn to Use Paddle Shifters for the Best Drive Experience in a Lamborghini
Ahhh… paddle shifters. These are a fact of life in a Lamborghini. That’s because this car was designed to use paddles in all but the most gentle in-town drives. Anyplace where there’s acceleration, curves, fast braking or fun, paddles are a must.
In fact, in Strada mode, the Huracán EVO we drove felt sort of normal— loud and powerful and the accelerator was appropriately responsive. In Sport mode I had to put more pressure on the accelerator to get the car up to speed; I appreciated that there wasn’t instant acceleration in sport mode. And in Corsa, well, there are only paddles. This makes the drive experience even more focused, but also more fun. It’s what puts the “sport” in sports car.
Our Huracán EVO, which is the most popular V10 sports car that Lamborghini makes, was also a Spyder, or convertible. So we put the top down, donned jackets and ball caps and away we went into the cool, crisp sun of mid-Fall in Texas.
Now THAT is an impressive rear view!
Keep Movember Going All Year Long
It’s inspiring to see a parade of Lamborghinis roaring down the road. They certainly get your attention, and adorned with mustaches, spark conversation. It’s the perfect partnership for Lamborghini, which culls its owner groups to join the parade and raises money for the cause. But you don’t need to be a Lambo owner to participate. You can donate, volunteer, enlist a Lambo-loving friend or two, or simply share in the social story telling to engage men in the conversation of health.
Disclosure: I was a guest of Lamborghini for the 2022 Bull Run, but all opinions are my own.