Betcha didn’t know you needed an off-road Lamborghini Huracán, right? Well, neither did we. Until now. Apparently, Lambo knows what gearheads want before we do. Called the Huracán Sterrato – a word which, loosely translated, refers to a type of pavement made of rough crushed granite – this concept is based on the V-10 Huracán, and draws on Lamborghini’s off-road expertise exemplified in the Itchy Urus super-SUV. It uses the same 5.2-litre naturally aspirated engine, belting out 640 horsepower and a good bit of Italian swagger. Here’s where things get interesting. The company says its all-wheel-drive system is calibrated for off-road driving, including “low-adherence surfaces.” Your author had plenty of experience with those in college, but none of them involved Lamborghinis. The system is also said to provoke oversteer in certain situations, placing this bad boy squarely at the corner of yee and haw. In addition to fiddling with the traction systems, Lambo went ahead and gave the thing a lift kit. Well, a lift kit of sorts, anyway. Ground clearance is heightened by 47 mm, with the car’s front approach sharpened by 1 per cent and the departure angle enhanced by 6.5 per cent. Your author never thought he’d use the words “departure angle” and “Huracán” in the same post but here we are. The wheel track is enhanced front and rear by 30 mm, with 20-inch wheels on tires set into new wide-body wheel arches featuring integrated air intakes. The Sterrato is fitted with underbody reinforcements and body protection, including a rear skid plate that acts as a diffuser. A specially-designed interior trim reflects the sporty off-road character of the Sterrato, featuring a new lightweight titanium roll cage, four-point seatbelts to the new carbon bi-shell sports seats and aluminum floor panels. Keep in mind that Lambo campaigned modified Jarama and Urraco models back in the ‘70s that were pressed into desert-going high-speed duty, so this isn’t the company’s first kick at this particularly outrageous can. In fact, we think it makes us love the absurdity of this Sterrato even
Origin: Lamborghini heads off-road with new Huracán Sterrato supercar
Lamborghini?
Confirmed: this is the just-restored Lamborghini Miura from ‘The Italian Job’
LAMBORGHINI MIURALamborghini Lamborghini has finally found, verified and restored the Miura P400 driven by Rossano Brazzi in the iconic opening scene of the classic 1969 film The Italian Job. The search lasted years, but the Kaiser Collection of Vaduz, in Liechtenstein, finally provided a light at the end of the tunnel, consulting the marque’s classic Polo Storico arm and asking it to examine the collection’s Miura to see if it was the long-lost car, and to assign a chassis number to the screen-used vehicle. Once Lamborghini specialists got their hands on it, they used documents and testimonies from former employees – including Enzo Moruzzi, who originally delivered the vehicle to the film set, and drove it as a stunt double for the actor in the film – to verify that chassis #3586 was indeed the Miura used in the movie. The Miura that Paramount Pictures pushed off the side of the mountain for the scene was an already heavily damaged vehicle the production company bought; to find a non-crashed match, Paramount went straight to Lamborghini. A P400 in exactly the same colour and with the same interior was pulled off the production line for the film. In order to keep the car in perfect shape for the car’s next owner after filming, Moruzzi requested the white seats of the car be changed to black ones. The headrests in a Miura are attached to the dividing glass between the engine and the cockpit, so when Moruzzi asked for the seats to be changed, the headrests remained in the original white—this is actually visible in some shots. On the now-restored car, the seats are in their original white colour. On the 50th anniversary of both the car and the film, the two are brought back together. Let’s just hope they avoid any tunnels on the way to the
Origin: Confirmed: this is the just-restored Lamborghini Miura from ‘The Italian Job’
Remember that time Chrysler bought Lamborghini?
1996 Lamborghini Diablo SV RClayton Seams / Driving For years, Lamborghini has been best-known for building the supercars in posters hung on your childhood bedroom’s wall, as a constant reminder to finish your homework on time. The Italian automaker was also known for something else, however — being perpetually broke. In 1987, Lamborghini was owned by brothers Robert, Jean-Claude, and Patrick Mimran, three Swiss billionaires who made their money in the sugar industry. However, nothing was as sweet as this week 32 years ago, when they sold Lamborghini to Chrysler for US$25.2 million. They were the only people to ever make money owning Lamborghini, according to Road and Track. Ouch. Chrysler was excited about the acquisition, investing almost double the purchase price back into Lamborghini. To show off the new venture, it decided to go all-out with a concept called the Portofino, but it’s not even close to the Ferrari that wears the name today. Instead, it was a mid-engined sedan with four scissor doors, a five-speed manual transmission, and the screaming V8 from the Jalpa — from which it also borrowed the chassis. Folks within Lamborghini called it a Big Potato, but they still had their jobs. The concept ended up being developed into designs that would define Chrysler for decades, so Chrysler owed them one. A big one. Enter the Diablo. Codenamed Project 132, it debuted on January 1, 1990 in Monte Carlo and the specs were insane, starting with a 492 horsepower V12 that could kill a Jaguar or Bugatti, in addition to a zero-to-60 mph time of just 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 202 mph — making it, at the time, the fastest car in the world. Marcello Gandini, who also designed the Miura, was responsible for the iconic lines and Dodge Viper designer Tom Gale also worked on the final design. Priced at a staggering US$211,050, the Diablo went on to earn Lamborghini US$1 million in profits by 1991. It seemed like Lamborghini was on top of the world — until it wasn’t. Chrysler began siphoning money from Lamborghini a year later after sales fell through the floor, and it was dropped like a big, hot potato. From gutter to glory, and back
Origin: Remember that time Chrysler bought Lamborghini?
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