Lamborghini Gallardo

The Gallardo is probably the finest all-round supercar money can buy.



Facts At A Glance

CAR: Lamborghini Gallardo

PRICE: £134,000 on the road

INSURANCE GROUP: 20

CO2 EMISSIONS: 400g/km

PERFORMANCE: Max Speed 196mph / 0-60mph 3.8s

FUEL CONSUMPTION: (combined) 14.5mpg WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE ? Length/Width/Height 4300/1900/1165mm

It takes quite some time to get your head around a Lamborghini Gallardo. After all, Lambos were always supposed to be cars that would leave the average driver with post traumatic stress disorder after the briefest acquaintance. Yet the latest Gallardo doesnt quite fit that billing. The doors dont open skywards, instead functioning much like a normal car.

If you ever want to understand why some people are willing to part with $246,000 for a Lamborghini, one day with a bright-yellow Gallardo Superleggera will make it all clear. People gawp and gape and wind down their windows to mouth the words “wow” and, in the case of spotty teenagers, “sick.”

Strangers become emboldened to ring your doorbell on a Saturday afternoon and beg for a closer look. Others will tail you home at 11 p.m., like pesky magnets, in pursuit of a closer look at a car that is a common sight only at Lamborghini’s plant in Sant’Agata Bolognese in northern Italy and possibly at South Beach in Florida.

The Superleggera is the hard-core version of Lambo’s entry-level supercar, the Gallardo, trimmed of 126 pounds, thanks to the extensive use of Superman-hard but lightweight carbon fiber. The engine cover, the rear diffuser, the underbody cover, the exterior mirrors, the rear spoiler, the side sills, and the inner door panels are all made of carbon fiber, and some of the glass—the rear window, for one—has been replaced with lighter-weight polycarbonate. Removing 126 pounds from a supercar is a good thing, but bear in mind that the 3434-pound curb weight is hardly light, as declared by the Italian term superleggera (“super light”).

Any new Lamborghini is an event, mainly because the lull between model releases is so painfully long. There were sixteen years between the Countach and the Diablo, a whopping twenty-eight between the Silhouette/Jalpa and the newest small Lamborghini, the Gallardo. But too often, the cars made news not with refinement and poise but with flashy bodywork, ludicrous top speeds, and handling so diabolical Lamborghini even named a car after it. Rudeness is at the core of the Lamborghini allure, but come on. Would you really want to ride a mechanical bull like the Diablo all the way up to 204 mph? The Diablo should have been equipped with dual-stage, front and side airsick bags.

Things are different at the little company from Sant'Agata Bolognese today, chiefly because the Italians have some very serious bosses from Audi peering over their shoulders. Proof of this is in the slightly less glacial pace at which Lamborghinis are arriving. The new Gallardo, due here in October, comes right after 2001's Murcilago, offering its own kind of proof that Lamborghini is serious about building world-class sports cars. The Gallardo is a comfortable, stylish, and thoroughly viable competitor to Porsche's 911 GT2 and Ferrari's 360 Modena-a daily driver of the type Ferruccio Lamborghini had in mind when he founded the company in 1963.

The legendary Ferrari-directed ire that prompted Lamborghini to make sports cars burns as fiercely as it ever did in Sant'Agata. The Gallardo's mission is to be the highest-performance car in its segment, and thus it uses some conventions of that segment as its starting point. Like the Modena, it has an aluminum spaceframe, optional automated-manual gearbox, mid-mounted engine, and twin front-mounted radiators that give the car its generous interior package. The Gallardo one-ups the Modena, though, in a few important areas. Instead of the 394-horsepower V-8 in the Ferrari, it has a 492-horsepower V-10. Instead of rear-wheel drive, it has a performance-oriented yet bacon-saving four-wheel-drive system. It is a bit heavier than the Modena, but its extra power puts it right in the low-four-second ballpark, acceleration-wise.

The V-10 that overcomes the Gallardo's 3153-pound curb weight is literally the centerpiece of the car. In contrast to Lamborghini's recent twelve-cylinder cars, power flows rearward from the engine to a tail-mounted six-speed transaxle. (In the Countach, the Diablo, and the Murcilago, the transmission is located forward of the engine.) A 90-degree V angle was selected to reduce the overall height of the undersquare (the stroke is longer than the bore) engine-a move that necessitated split crank pins to achieve even firing intervals. Other features include a dry-sump lubrication system that further lowers engine height and center of gravity, variable timing on intake and exhaust tracts, a two-stage intake manifold with long runners to optimize midrange output and short runners for peak power at high rpm, and dual electronically actuated throttles.

Against the clock, the Gallardo will register a sprint to 60mph in 3.8 seconds and keep going to 196mph. The four-wheel drive electronics arent quite as clever as those in a 911 Turbo when it comes to stepping cleanly off the line but get up to higher velocities and you wont begrudge that, the Gallardo behaving for the most part like a traditional rear driver. Only when youre really pushing it over scabby tarmac can you feel the front tyres biting for grip.



What impresses most is the body control. Drive the same section of road in a Porsche 911 or even a Ferrari F430 and there would be a lot more roll, squat and dive. The Lamborghini planes flat, almost sucked to the ground, its hefty 19-inch tyres and foursquare stance giving the driver almost unassailable confidence levels. Equipment levels have been enhanced and include items like the Lamborghini Multimedia System with CD changer, MP3 player and tuner.