New Big Lambos come only once a decade, and it must be a near—impossible task to step into the shoes of the Murciélago, that giant brute of a car. Especially when the last-hurrah LP670-4 was so finely developed. But Lamborghini isn’t shying away from the task.
With an all-new V12 making 700bhp, drama is assured. Especially as it ought to make a sound to rival the thunder of the gods as it hammers towards 8,25Orpm – noise was one of Lambo’s stated reasons for not turbocharging.
There is another critical number for the new Lamborghini, but it’ll be guarded in fanatical secrecy for another few months. The weight. After all, cutting weight as an alternative to adding power. So it’s switching to an all-carbon tub and skin, and has built a new production line to do it.
Speed shouldn’t be an issue here. This car – sorry, the name is still a guessing game too — is going to have to be significantly faster than the old Murciélago, and indeed the Gallardo Superleggera. That puts it somewhere between ‘premier division hypercar’ and ‘shot from a cannon’.
Sure enough, Lambo says it’ll do 217mph, with its powered rear wing in the terminal velocity low-drag mode.
There’s a new race-type pushrod suspension too, an electronically controlled centre diff and carbon brakes. So things should be a bit less intimidating in tyre-shredding corners.
The cabin should get proper Audi levels of quality (if not too many shared switches, please) and will be roomier. It also has more glass, so with any luck will be easier to see out of. And be seen in.
By the looks of these thinly disguised prototypes, Lambo has gone for an evolutionary silhouette. So it won’t be the visceral shock a Countach was. But, yes, the scissor doors will live on. Anyway, Lambo’s design director Manfred Fitzgerald simply doesn’t do shy and retiring. The radical faceted surfacing of his Reventén and Sesto Elemento concept shows the way he’s thinking.
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