Posted on 11/08/2003 3:48:23 PM PST by Archangelsk
NEW YORK TIMES: BEHIND THE WHEEL 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo: New Direction for an Italian JobBy NORMAN MAYERSOHN Date Posted 11-07-2003
At a time when luxury brands are leveraging their reputations to ever-higher price levels - as evidence, look no further than Mercedes-Benz adding the Maybach line of ultraluxury sedans starting at more that $300,000 - the arrival of the new Gallardo from Lamborghini might be seen as a contrarian move by this small-scale, but legendary, maker of exotic sports cars.
No one doubts that Lamborghini, based in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, can craft strikingly bold machines that simultaneously stop traffic and deliver phenomenal performance. Witness the Murciélago, a handsomely chiseled hunk that can exert a 580-horsepower measure of authority to muscle its way past 200 miles an hour, all the while lightening a buyer's bank account by more than $250,000.
But designing an ultra high performance sports car that can be driven on a daily basis - let's say a two-seater of reasonable comfort and practicality, with a top speed that exceeds 190 m.p.h. and a price that is a cool hundred grand lower - is a challenge of another magnitude. The marriage of civility and passion rarely yields a happily-ever-after ending.
Fortunately, Lamborghini had a well-qualified coaching staff to guide it through the project of creating a baby brother for the Murciélago. Its corporate parent, Volkswagen, and specifically its Audi subsidiary, pitched in on the Gallardo, providing engineering expertise, funding and factory space for making key components, all in pursuit of a well-balanced package that would appeal to greater number of drivers than the narrowly focused Murciélago.
Seeing the Gallardo in context, on asphalt and away from the idealized pose of an auto show display, dispels any fears that VW, owner since 1998, has toned down Italian flair. The Gallardo's styling is all angles and planes, with the creased edges of a Stealth fighter jet. Buy a Lamborghini Gallardo for $160,000 - especially one in orange - and you are pretty much assured of attracting attention. It may not always be the kind you want, I learned.
My rendezvous point with the car is the Borgata, a posh hotel and casino in the marina district of Atlantic City, and it proves to be the perfect setting for an introduction.
Despite a wealth of rolling stock parked at the front door, the pack alpha is easy to locate by the Borgata's front door: it's the one you can't see because of all the people crowded around.
Minutes after leaving the hotel, I drive past a police car that is stopped at a red light. When the light changes, he turns and pulls into traffic behind me, so I am extra careful to observe the speed limit. After a mile or so of being followed at close range, I turn left onto a side road; the officer follows. Knowing that flashing lights are inevitable, I simply pull off the road, dig out my driver's license and lower the window.
"You know you were driving pretty slowly back there?" the officer asks, peering down into a passenger compartment that is at least a foot closer to the ground than the family sedans whizzing by. Confident that I have not broken any laws, I risk pushing the issue slightly. "Yes, well, you see, there was a cop right behind me."
A slight grin cracks through the officer's all-business facade. At about the same time I am praising my wit, two more patrol cars pull up, light bars aglow.
Fortunately, it is just the aforementioned attention, and a friendly chat about price and power ensues.
"How fast will it go?" a young, wide-eyed, but not-quite-drooling officer, asks.
"Not over the speed limit," I reply. The first officer hands back my license and I am back on the road.
In striving to be an every day supercar, the Gallardo is a departure from Lamborghini's rather more radical models of recent times. For one thing, Lamborghini intends to build about 1,200 Gallardos annually when production hits full stride next year, which is triple the output of the company's Murciélago. Creature comforts such as air-conditioning are standard, as are all-wheel drive and electronic stability control.
The class is best defined, perhaps, by the Ferrari 360 Modena, a similarly priced two-seater that is powered by a mid-mounted V-8 engine. The Porsche 911 Turbo also competes for buyers in this price range, as will the Ford GT, a revival of the Le Mans-winning GT40 race car that will make its debut next year.
One of the hallmarks of limited-production exotic cars is an unconventional door opening. The Mercedes-Benz SL300 of the 1950's was notable for its gull-wing door mechanism, and recent Lamborghinis have employed a scissor-action hinge that rotates the door upward for entry and exit. Lamborghini says it will reserve that quirk for the V12 models, so the Gallardo has conventional swing-open doors.
The Gallardo has benefited greatly from being developed under the watchful eye of Audi. Some of the borrowed technologies lie hidden under the skin, while others are in plain view. The chassis, for example, is an aluminum space frame, a skeletal design assembled from extruded rectangular tubes and cast aluminum junction blocks. It was pioneered on the Audi A8 luxury sedan. Like the A8, the Gallardo's exterior body panels are almost entirely aluminum. And the cylinder block of the 500-horsepower V-10 engine is the stretch version of Audi's V-8.
The distinctive shriek of a vintage Ferrari V-12, or the characteristic whoosh of a Porsche flat six, stamp those cars as vehicles beyond the ordinary. The Gallardo's V-10 may not have such a pedigreed lineage, but the final effect is convincing - acceleration to 60 m.p.h. takes just over four seconds, Lamborghini says. Lamborghini contributed its own electronic engine management system and refined the twin-cam, five-valve-per-cylinder heads.
The power is balanced by brakes of a most impressive specification - eight-piston calipers in front and four-piston in the rear. The effect on a smooth dry road is astonishing.
The Gallardo I drove was equipped with the e-gear six-speed transmission - at an extra cost of $9,200 - one of a new breed of gearboxes that defies simple classification as a manual or automatic unit. Like similar units from Audi, Aston Martin, BMW, and Ferrari, the e-gear can be shifted manually by using paddles behind the steering wheel. There is no clutch pedal, and a fully automatic mode is offered at the flip of a switch on the center console. The shift paddles, which are on the instrument panel, do not turn with the steering wheel. This is an arrangement I prefer because there is never a need to search for the handles, which can happen when they turn with the steering wheel.
On the center console is a switch to select the appropriate driving mode: normal, sport, automatic and winter driving. All shifts can be made without letting up on the gas, and the sport setting, with its quicker shifts, actually seems more comfortable than the normal mode. After driving a Murciélago with the manual six-speed later the same day, there is no question that the e-gear is a far better choice for an everyday supercar.
Driving the Gallardo - at least when the rear view mirror is not filled by the grille of a police cruiser - could hardly be more natural. The cockpit is not roomy, with precious little room to stash a purse or a small camera bag, but it does feel airy. Although the driver cannot see the front edge of the car, that situation is not really a problem because of its midengine layout. View to the rear is hindered by the small back window, making lane changes an act of faith.
The Gallardo cockpit is tidy and well-detailed. The only things I find unsettling are the direct-from-Audi electronic panels for the audio and climate control. Encountering these familiar faces in this setting is like running into your cardiologist at a Star Trek convention.
All-season tires and wheels are a smart choice for the owner who expects four-season use, and a set of fitted bull hide luggage (four pieces) makes the most efficient use of the limited space.
Is the Gallardo commuter-ready? Oh, to take a year and find out.
INSIDE TRACK: A supercar for every day, if not for every driver.
Like someone is going to be keeping up with you
Considering the price tag, the wondercar stays in the heated garage and the owner takes the Audi A8 to work.
I do! I'll challenge this piece of Euro-trash to a winner take all race from my house to work (approx. 16 miles) in 6 inches of new snow and bumper to bumper traffic any day any time.......
The Euro-junk won't have to worry about stopping traffic, it will already be stopped....
Here's my favorite Lamborgini, the P400 Miura S/V (from the early 70's).
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