|
We want supercars to be low, noisy, fast and jaw-dropping which, despite its faults, is what the Lamborghini LP 560-4 is There was a time not that long ago when driving a Lamborghini came at a price. To own something that looked like a spaceship and had the performance of a small nuclear explosion, you had to ritually cripple yourself every time you drove it, wedged like a foetus into the 5% of the car that wasn’t filled with engine. The cars looked incredible on a poster stuck to your bedroom wall, but they were porcine to drive slowly and terrifying to drive fast. If you ambled, you stalled frequently; if you drove fast, you either developed the reflexes of a housefly or you crashed. And then the clutch went. As for practicality, the visibility was so poor that rumour has it Lamborghini owners developed rudimentary sonar long before parking sensors were invented. Eleven years ago, however, the German giant Audi bought Lamborghini, and all that changed. Naturally purists complained that the air-conditioning worked, and that Audi would somehow leach all the Italian drama out of a Lambo. Well, if by “drama” they actually meant “rubbishness”, then they were right. Lambos aren’t rubbish any more. The transformation began with the Gallardo of 2003, which became Lamborghini’s most successful model. It was small and usable, still looked like your mother would hate it and wasn’t as prone to exploding as previous models such as the Diablo. Last year Lamborghini freshened up the standard Gallardo coupé, gave it more power and called it the Gallardo LP 560-4 (the digits refer to the power, 560bhp, and the four-wheel drive) and now there’s the convertible version, this LP 560-4 Spyder. |
Read more: timesonline
[Source: GermanCarForum]
