Suddenly, a new Lamborghini has got more affordable. Well, slightly - the new Gallardo should cost around £110,000 when gets here later this year, a handy £50,000 less than the V12 Murcielago. Looking a little like a miniature of its bigger brother - a demerit, in the eyes of some - the Gallardo is powered by a 500bhp mid-mounted 5.0-litre V10 engine and comes with four-wheel drive and a six-speed transmission. The need-to-know performance figures read like this: 62mph comes up in 4.2 seconds, and its top speed runs to 192mph.
So it’s not slow, and crucially, given the inevitable comparisons that will be made with the Ferrari 360 Modena, it weighs around the same - despite the weight of a four-wheel drive system - and offers 100 more horses. It will cost a little more than the 360, but on paper at least, it looks like a serious challenge to Ferrari’s best-selling supercar. Lamborghini obviously thinks so - it sold just 424 Murcielagos last, year, but reckons it will sell over a 1000 examples of both cars during 2003, some 800-900 being Gallardos.
Lamborghini has longed to make a supercar smaller than the Murcielago and Diablo for years, a follow-up to the V8-engined Urraco of the ’70s. Various prototypes have been developed over the past 20 years, and the company even showcased its thinking with the ItalDesign-styled V10 Cala concept in 1995. But it was only when Audi bought the company in 1999 that it gained the resources to develop a model to slot below the Murcielago.
In fact, ItalDesign had already provided a design proposal for the Gallardo when Audi arrived on the scene, which Audi’s own design department has developed and refined. ItalDesign’s Fabrizio Giugiaro, son of the famous Giorgetto, created the original proposal, and professes to be very pleased with the final result. “Many details are different,” he says, “but the character is the same.”
Like the Murcielago, the Gallardo has a cab-forward look, the windscreen overhanging the front wheels to produce a compact, thrusting stance emphasised by the short, shovel nose. Its waistline rises towards the tail of the car, lending it a hunched look suggestive of power about to be unleashed, an impression emphasised by the highly defined crease lines on the body. “It’s a very sharp car,” says Giugiaro, “and the impression of compactness is very important because in reality it is not very much smaller than the Murcielago.” He reveals that the Gallardo’s rear end was hardest to design: “We wanted to integrate the spoiler - which tilts - into the design, and integrate all the cooling grilles - it’s a very technical look.”
Inside, he says, the aim was to provide “space, better ergonomics and a more compact dashboard.” And anyone fortunate enough to have driven a Diablo will attest to the need for improvement on that score. Quality is also vastly better than you could hope to find in a pre-Murcielago Lambo, Audi’s skills in the art of high precision, high quality interior design brought to bear to good effect. The business of getting in the Gallardo might surprise Lamborghini aficionados, because the doors are hinged conventionally rather than in scissor style. The reason is partly packaging - there simply isn’t the room to house the complex hinge between the front wheel and the forward quarterlight in this shorter car - and partly because Lamborghini wants to preserve the drama of scissor doors for its ultimate model.
[source: salon-auto.ch and lamborghini-press.com]
Pictures from Geneva:
Related articles:
- Lamborghini back on the racetrack: the Murcielago R-GT
- Automobili Lamborghini at the Paris Motor Show
- Lamborghini presents the Gallardo Nera at the Paris Motor Show
- The Lamborghini “Concept S” at the Geneva Motor Show
- The new Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera: The sportiest and most ‘purist’ Gallardo ever
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