bmer
Tire Trailblazer
- Messages
- 6,956
SUPERCAR SAVIOR
Faster, sharper-looking and better handling, the new Gallardo LP560-4 guarantees that the good times will keep on rolling at Lamborghini.
By ERIC GUSTAFSON
Photography courtesy LAMBORGHINI
The Gallardo saved Lamborghini. Before its debut in 2003, Lamborghini was building preciously few automobili—just 442 cars in 2002, all of them Murciélagos. Still largely built by hand, this V12 supercar was, and still is, extraordinarily expensive to construct, making profitability a near impossibility.
Lamborghini was awash in red ink when the VW Group bought it in 1998. Partnered with Audi, Lamborghini received a massive infusion of R&D capability, as well as manufacturing prowess. The Gallardo’s aluminum spaceframe is the manifestation of this transformation. Lighter. Stiffer. Cheaper. How can a complex aluminum frame be less expensive than a bunch of welded-together steel tubes? Well, when it’s made on a modern assembly line in Germany it is.
While some grumbled heresy over the prospect of attaching an Italian heart to a German frame, the resulting car was a revelation. The new 5.0-liter V10 engine provided 500 horsepower, while Lamborghini’s proven viscous-coupling all-wheel-drive system made the Gallardo’s extreme performance controllable by mere mortals.
Then there was the looks. Just as BMW’s Chris Bangle was leading exterior design down the dubious path of surface detail, Luc Donkerwolke was taking Lamborghini’s styling back to its elemental core. With the Gallardo he executed one of the most breathtakingly simple sports cars of all time. A single, sweeping line—the perfect arc of its roofline—defines this Lamborghini.
The Gallardo was an immediate success for Sant’Agata. Lamborghini sold 890 of them in the first year, representing a 195-percent increase in total sales. The second year went even better: 1,215 Gallardos found new homes. Encouragingly for the Italian carmaker, the majority of these sales were conquests. But then again, there were not a whole lot of existing Lamborghini owners out there.
Just as coupe sales began to flag, Lamborghini debuted the Spyder, increasing Gallardo production from 972 in ’05 to 1,651 units in ’06. Then, last year, Lamborghini trotted out 400 lighter, more powerful Gallardo Superleggeras.
In 2007, vehicle deliveries were up 15 percent for a total of 2,406 units. More importantly for Lamborghini, revenues rose 35 percent and pretax profits rose an astonishing 160 percent. As CEO Stephen Winkelmann puts it, “We’re earning real money.” Following a course of what he describes as “controlled growth,” he expects a further 5-percent production increase in 2008. This plan includes the debut of a new product each year, as well as the expansion of dealerships from the current 107 to 140. In 2005, Lamborghini had only 65 dealerships.
All this success has created two problems for Lamborghini. First, how do you manage such transformative growth, both logistically and in terms of brand identity? And second, how do you improve upon the Gallardo? It turns out that there is a single man largely responsible for addressing both of these issues.
Manfred Fitzgerald holds a unique title in the automotive sphere: Director of Brand and Design. Carmakers are all about vertical integration these days, but Lamborghini is so far alone in bringing design and brand management not only under one roof, but under one hat. Everything from the facades of dealerships to the stitching on Lamborghini-branded clothing comes under Fitzgerald’s purview. Most importantly, the design of the cars does, too.
At first glance, the new Gallardo LP560-4 doesn’t look all that different than the original version, but look closer, and it quickly becomes evident that nearly every panel has been altered. Taking its cue from the Murciélago-based Reventón, the sharply creased nose incorporates larger air intakes, a long splitter and significantly smaller headlights.
At the rear, the shift to horizontally oriented taillights and an uninterrupted engine-bay vent makes the tail look wider and more hunkered down, despite the dimensions being unaltered. The rear valance area has been cleaned up, as well, with a better integrated diffuser. Together, these changes make for a much more focused and aggressive-looking Gallardo—a car that says “Lamborghini” with even more conviction than before.
Not only has Fitzgerald’s design team given the Gallardo a newfound edge in terms of styling, it’s also improved the car’s aerodynamic efficiency. Extensive wind-tunnel testing yielded 30 percent more downforce, while maintaining the same coefficient of drag.
After taking in the drama of the updated exterior, the interior is a bit of a letdown. The center console has been nicely updated and is more attractive, but it looks no less Audi-like—the switches, the toggles and the buttons all say Ingolstadt, not Sant’Agata. The Gallardo has a wonderful steering wheel, but the fact that any number of Volkswagen Group offerings use the same one dulls the sheen. Similarly, the interior’s large swaths of leather and Alcantara are pleasing to the eye and hand, but they don’t instill a sense of drama.
Admittedly, our tester was dressed in all black and the color options for the car are nearly endless—you want crimson leather, you got it—but the interior of an Italian supercar should feel special no matter how you option it. This one doesn’t, which is at odds with the high-fashion image Lamborghini projects. At least it’s fairly comfortable, with a good seating position and decent headroom.
What’s almost impossible to notice is the fact that the engineers designed a Gallardo that is far simpler to produce, with assembly time being just a third of what it was before. Clearly, Lamborghini is becoming fluent in the language of profitability, especially since the Gallardo’s base price has increased from $186,000 to $201,000 despite this reduction in production costs.
We never found the Gallardo lacking for power, but with arch rival Ferrari eclipsing its V10’s engine output with the 510-hp 430 Scuderia and Porsche releasing the 530-hp 911 GT2, the ante had been raised. The easiest step in this process was bumping up displacement. Enlarging bore size from 82.5 to 84.5 mm resulted in an increase from 5.0 to 5.2 liters. The trickier part was redesigning the cylinder heads to accommodate an entirely new direct fuel-injection system.
Wait, you say, doesn’t the Audi S6 have a 5.2-liter V10 with direct fuel injection? It does, and it is indeed based on the Lamborghini engine. But the new Gallardo V10 doesn’t share the same bore and stroke measurements, nor does it have the same fuel injection. We couldn’t have blamed Lamborghini if it had gone down that route; after all, Audi is an industry leader in the field of direct injection. But, as it turns out, Lamborghini didn’t have a choice. Its new engine has an 8,500-rpm redline; the Audi direct-injection system can only handle 7,000. Still too small to take on such a project by itself, Lamborghini partnered with Germany’s Bosch to develop Iniezione Diretta Stratificata. In addition to keeping up with the cylinders’ rapid movements, the system helps smooth out the torque curve and improve efficiency. Despite punching out 60 more horsepower, the new V10 allows the Gallardo to achieve better fuel economy.
A small part of the 18-percent gain in efficiency is due to a slight reduction in curb weight. Forty four pounds isn’t much, but when you consider that new cars have been gaining weight at an alarming weight rate for quite some time, any reversal of this trend is something to celebrate. The reduction in mass comes largely from the new gearbox, which weighs 66 pounds less than its predecessor. Other mass is trimmed from the suspension through the more extensive use of aluminum. These measures are offset slightly by some added content. Efficiency is also increased by the use of specially constructed Pirelli P Zero tires with 10 percent lower rolling resistance.
Behind the newly redesigned wheels lies thoroughly revised suspension. The biggest change is the inclusion of an additional tie rod in the rear that helps control toe angle during high lateral acceleration. Equally significant is the alteration of suspension geometry both front and rear. In addition, a new type of rubber-coated metal bushing is used to improve ride quality and reduce noise. It utilizes two different grades of rubber; the softer, outer layer helps absorb low-speed bumps, while the harder inner layer ensures better roadholding characteristics during aggressive cornering.
What better place to test out a flashy new Lamborghini than the City of Lights, Las Vegas? Well, actually, we can think of a whole bunch. The roads outside of town are so straight and the curves are so gentle that you have to blatantly disregard the speed limit to generate any kind of cornering force. We couldn’t help ourselves—not with this much power at our disposal—and were able to get a limited snapshot of the new Gallardo’s on-road handling. It’s absolutely user-friendly and dead neutral. A tiny bit of body roll helps give a sense of where the car is at in terms of the limit of adhesion, but just a hint.
At least Lamborghini provided a better venue for plumbing the Gallardo’s depths: Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With an official chaperone ahead of us to keep our speeds in check—ironically enough, he was at the wheel of a 640-hp Murciélago LP640—we joined a line of Gallardos and ventured out onto the track. A quick blast of acceleration was accompanied by a loud, hearty roar from the engine.
Though our guide set a moderate pace around the oval’s banking and down the straightaway, he turned up the wick on the infield road course, allowing us to put the spurs to our mount. The Gallardo responded with the immediacy of a thoroughbred, sailing through the corners with ease and gobbling up the short straights with voracious urgency. The LP560’s acceleration is simply incredible, as gut wrenching as it is effortless. Lamborghini claims a 0-62-mph time of 3.7 seconds; it’s likely quicker than that.
All the cars at the launch event were fitted with carbon-ceramic brakes—a $10,000 option—as well as ultra-sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires and the E.gear paddle-shift transmission. Though the massive rotors (15-inch front, 14-inch rear) perfectly fill up the 19-inch wheels, look fantastic and provide huge reserves of braking power (up to 1.2 g), the brake pedal is spongy. There’s quite a bit of travel before strong retardation is achieved, at which point it comes on rather abruptly. Not surprisingly, given their racing roots, the brakes improved once we got some heat into them, but even then they failed to be progressive. We have little doubt the amply sized (14.4-inch, 14-inch) cast-iron units are more than up to the job and would provide better brake feel; we’d rather have that than a higher resistance to fade.
It’s a similar scenario with the tires. The Corsas are simply overkill for the street. Get these suckers to squeal on a backroad and you’ll likely be in way over your head. Even on the track they were hard to fully exploit. We thought we’d totally overcooked one corner, but the Gallardo flew around it without a wiggle or a flash of electronic intervention. The roadholding limits of the LP560-4 with these tires is absolutely stratospheric.
Before leaving the pits, we’d placed the Gallardo in its Corsa setting, which provides the fastest shift speed and the longest leash in terms of stability/traction control. The cog swaps are indeed fast in this mode—40 percent quicker than before—but they’re also brutal. So much so that within a few laps we selected the less aggressive, but still satisfyingly rapid Sport mode. Unless you’re setting a qualifying lap or want your passenger to spill their cappuccino, the Corsa setting is needlessly abrupt.
While we applaud Lamborghini for connecting the paddles to the steering column instead of the wheel, we wish they had placed them lower, or at least made them bigger. As with the first-generation model, we found ourselves having to move our hands up from our three-and-nine position to tug the paddles.
The transmission’s automatic mode also needs work. When driving rapidly, it performs acceptably, but get stuck in some stop-and-go traffic—say on the Vegas Strip—and E.gear stumbles woefully. With all eyes trained on its attention-grabbing exterior, our Gallardo bucked and lurched its way to each stoplight. Lesson learned: E-gear needs to be paddled. Moreover, single-clutch setups like this are at a distinct disadvantage to the new generation of twin-clutch gearboxes.
Niggles aside, the Gallardo LP560-4 appears destined to become a big sales success for Lamborghini. European deliveries began in June and North American vehicles show up in late summer, but the line has long since formed: There were already 550 pre-ordered cars in the books in early May, and the wait time is up to nine months. Just as the original Gallardo helped turn business around for Lamborghini, the updated version will likely ensure a bright future.
SCI Magazine
Faster, sharper-looking and better handling, the new Gallardo LP560-4 guarantees that the good times will keep on rolling at Lamborghini.
By ERIC GUSTAFSON
Photography courtesy LAMBORGHINI
The Gallardo saved Lamborghini. Before its debut in 2003, Lamborghini was building preciously few automobili—just 442 cars in 2002, all of them Murciélagos. Still largely built by hand, this V12 supercar was, and still is, extraordinarily expensive to construct, making profitability a near impossibility.
Lamborghini was awash in red ink when the VW Group bought it in 1998. Partnered with Audi, Lamborghini received a massive infusion of R&D capability, as well as manufacturing prowess. The Gallardo’s aluminum spaceframe is the manifestation of this transformation. Lighter. Stiffer. Cheaper. How can a complex aluminum frame be less expensive than a bunch of welded-together steel tubes? Well, when it’s made on a modern assembly line in Germany it is.
While some grumbled heresy over the prospect of attaching an Italian heart to a German frame, the resulting car was a revelation. The new 5.0-liter V10 engine provided 500 horsepower, while Lamborghini’s proven viscous-coupling all-wheel-drive system made the Gallardo’s extreme performance controllable by mere mortals.
Then there was the looks. Just as BMW’s Chris Bangle was leading exterior design down the dubious path of surface detail, Luc Donkerwolke was taking Lamborghini’s styling back to its elemental core. With the Gallardo he executed one of the most breathtakingly simple sports cars of all time. A single, sweeping line—the perfect arc of its roofline—defines this Lamborghini.
The Gallardo was an immediate success for Sant’Agata. Lamborghini sold 890 of them in the first year, representing a 195-percent increase in total sales. The second year went even better: 1,215 Gallardos found new homes. Encouragingly for the Italian carmaker, the majority of these sales were conquests. But then again, there were not a whole lot of existing Lamborghini owners out there.
Just as coupe sales began to flag, Lamborghini debuted the Spyder, increasing Gallardo production from 972 in ’05 to 1,651 units in ’06. Then, last year, Lamborghini trotted out 400 lighter, more powerful Gallardo Superleggeras.
In 2007, vehicle deliveries were up 15 percent for a total of 2,406 units. More importantly for Lamborghini, revenues rose 35 percent and pretax profits rose an astonishing 160 percent. As CEO Stephen Winkelmann puts it, “We’re earning real money.” Following a course of what he describes as “controlled growth,” he expects a further 5-percent production increase in 2008. This plan includes the debut of a new product each year, as well as the expansion of dealerships from the current 107 to 140. In 2005, Lamborghini had only 65 dealerships.
All this success has created two problems for Lamborghini. First, how do you manage such transformative growth, both logistically and in terms of brand identity? And second, how do you improve upon the Gallardo? It turns out that there is a single man largely responsible for addressing both of these issues.
Manfred Fitzgerald holds a unique title in the automotive sphere: Director of Brand and Design. Carmakers are all about vertical integration these days, but Lamborghini is so far alone in bringing design and brand management not only under one roof, but under one hat. Everything from the facades of dealerships to the stitching on Lamborghini-branded clothing comes under Fitzgerald’s purview. Most importantly, the design of the cars does, too.
At first glance, the new Gallardo LP560-4 doesn’t look all that different than the original version, but look closer, and it quickly becomes evident that nearly every panel has been altered. Taking its cue from the Murciélago-based Reventón, the sharply creased nose incorporates larger air intakes, a long splitter and significantly smaller headlights.
At the rear, the shift to horizontally oriented taillights and an uninterrupted engine-bay vent makes the tail look wider and more hunkered down, despite the dimensions being unaltered. The rear valance area has been cleaned up, as well, with a better integrated diffuser. Together, these changes make for a much more focused and aggressive-looking Gallardo—a car that says “Lamborghini” with even more conviction than before.
Not only has Fitzgerald’s design team given the Gallardo a newfound edge in terms of styling, it’s also improved the car’s aerodynamic efficiency. Extensive wind-tunnel testing yielded 30 percent more downforce, while maintaining the same coefficient of drag.
After taking in the drama of the updated exterior, the interior is a bit of a letdown. The center console has been nicely updated and is more attractive, but it looks no less Audi-like—the switches, the toggles and the buttons all say Ingolstadt, not Sant’Agata. The Gallardo has a wonderful steering wheel, but the fact that any number of Volkswagen Group offerings use the same one dulls the sheen. Similarly, the interior’s large swaths of leather and Alcantara are pleasing to the eye and hand, but they don’t instill a sense of drama.
Admittedly, our tester was dressed in all black and the color options for the car are nearly endless—you want crimson leather, you got it—but the interior of an Italian supercar should feel special no matter how you option it. This one doesn’t, which is at odds with the high-fashion image Lamborghini projects. At least it’s fairly comfortable, with a good seating position and decent headroom.
What’s almost impossible to notice is the fact that the engineers designed a Gallardo that is far simpler to produce, with assembly time being just a third of what it was before. Clearly, Lamborghini is becoming fluent in the language of profitability, especially since the Gallardo’s base price has increased from $186,000 to $201,000 despite this reduction in production costs.
We never found the Gallardo lacking for power, but with arch rival Ferrari eclipsing its V10’s engine output with the 510-hp 430 Scuderia and Porsche releasing the 530-hp 911 GT2, the ante had been raised. The easiest step in this process was bumping up displacement. Enlarging bore size from 82.5 to 84.5 mm resulted in an increase from 5.0 to 5.2 liters. The trickier part was redesigning the cylinder heads to accommodate an entirely new direct fuel-injection system.
Wait, you say, doesn’t the Audi S6 have a 5.2-liter V10 with direct fuel injection? It does, and it is indeed based on the Lamborghini engine. But the new Gallardo V10 doesn’t share the same bore and stroke measurements, nor does it have the same fuel injection. We couldn’t have blamed Lamborghini if it had gone down that route; after all, Audi is an industry leader in the field of direct injection. But, as it turns out, Lamborghini didn’t have a choice. Its new engine has an 8,500-rpm redline; the Audi direct-injection system can only handle 7,000. Still too small to take on such a project by itself, Lamborghini partnered with Germany’s Bosch to develop Iniezione Diretta Stratificata. In addition to keeping up with the cylinders’ rapid movements, the system helps smooth out the torque curve and improve efficiency. Despite punching out 60 more horsepower, the new V10 allows the Gallardo to achieve better fuel economy.
A small part of the 18-percent gain in efficiency is due to a slight reduction in curb weight. Forty four pounds isn’t much, but when you consider that new cars have been gaining weight at an alarming weight rate for quite some time, any reversal of this trend is something to celebrate. The reduction in mass comes largely from the new gearbox, which weighs 66 pounds less than its predecessor. Other mass is trimmed from the suspension through the more extensive use of aluminum. These measures are offset slightly by some added content. Efficiency is also increased by the use of specially constructed Pirelli P Zero tires with 10 percent lower rolling resistance.
Behind the newly redesigned wheels lies thoroughly revised suspension. The biggest change is the inclusion of an additional tie rod in the rear that helps control toe angle during high lateral acceleration. Equally significant is the alteration of suspension geometry both front and rear. In addition, a new type of rubber-coated metal bushing is used to improve ride quality and reduce noise. It utilizes two different grades of rubber; the softer, outer layer helps absorb low-speed bumps, while the harder inner layer ensures better roadholding characteristics during aggressive cornering.
What better place to test out a flashy new Lamborghini than the City of Lights, Las Vegas? Well, actually, we can think of a whole bunch. The roads outside of town are so straight and the curves are so gentle that you have to blatantly disregard the speed limit to generate any kind of cornering force. We couldn’t help ourselves—not with this much power at our disposal—and were able to get a limited snapshot of the new Gallardo’s on-road handling. It’s absolutely user-friendly and dead neutral. A tiny bit of body roll helps give a sense of where the car is at in terms of the limit of adhesion, but just a hint.
At least Lamborghini provided a better venue for plumbing the Gallardo’s depths: Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With an official chaperone ahead of us to keep our speeds in check—ironically enough, he was at the wheel of a 640-hp Murciélago LP640—we joined a line of Gallardos and ventured out onto the track. A quick blast of acceleration was accompanied by a loud, hearty roar from the engine.
Though our guide set a moderate pace around the oval’s banking and down the straightaway, he turned up the wick on the infield road course, allowing us to put the spurs to our mount. The Gallardo responded with the immediacy of a thoroughbred, sailing through the corners with ease and gobbling up the short straights with voracious urgency. The LP560’s acceleration is simply incredible, as gut wrenching as it is effortless. Lamborghini claims a 0-62-mph time of 3.7 seconds; it’s likely quicker than that.
All the cars at the launch event were fitted with carbon-ceramic brakes—a $10,000 option—as well as ultra-sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires and the E.gear paddle-shift transmission. Though the massive rotors (15-inch front, 14-inch rear) perfectly fill up the 19-inch wheels, look fantastic and provide huge reserves of braking power (up to 1.2 g), the brake pedal is spongy. There’s quite a bit of travel before strong retardation is achieved, at which point it comes on rather abruptly. Not surprisingly, given their racing roots, the brakes improved once we got some heat into them, but even then they failed to be progressive. We have little doubt the amply sized (14.4-inch, 14-inch) cast-iron units are more than up to the job and would provide better brake feel; we’d rather have that than a higher resistance to fade.
It’s a similar scenario with the tires. The Corsas are simply overkill for the street. Get these suckers to squeal on a backroad and you’ll likely be in way over your head. Even on the track they were hard to fully exploit. We thought we’d totally overcooked one corner, but the Gallardo flew around it without a wiggle or a flash of electronic intervention. The roadholding limits of the LP560-4 with these tires is absolutely stratospheric.
Before leaving the pits, we’d placed the Gallardo in its Corsa setting, which provides the fastest shift speed and the longest leash in terms of stability/traction control. The cog swaps are indeed fast in this mode—40 percent quicker than before—but they’re also brutal. So much so that within a few laps we selected the less aggressive, but still satisfyingly rapid Sport mode. Unless you’re setting a qualifying lap or want your passenger to spill their cappuccino, the Corsa setting is needlessly abrupt.
While we applaud Lamborghini for connecting the paddles to the steering column instead of the wheel, we wish they had placed them lower, or at least made them bigger. As with the first-generation model, we found ourselves having to move our hands up from our three-and-nine position to tug the paddles.
The transmission’s automatic mode also needs work. When driving rapidly, it performs acceptably, but get stuck in some stop-and-go traffic—say on the Vegas Strip—and E.gear stumbles woefully. With all eyes trained on its attention-grabbing exterior, our Gallardo bucked and lurched its way to each stoplight. Lesson learned: E-gear needs to be paddled. Moreover, single-clutch setups like this are at a distinct disadvantage to the new generation of twin-clutch gearboxes.
Niggles aside, the Gallardo LP560-4 appears destined to become a big sales success for Lamborghini. European deliveries began in June and North American vehicles show up in late summer, but the line has long since formed: There were already 550 pre-ordered cars in the books in early May, and the wait time is up to nine months. Just as the original Gallardo helped turn business around for Lamborghini, the updated version will likely ensure a bright future.
SCI Magazine
