Soup
Premium
Lamborghini has something special planned for fans of stripped-down, elemental sports cars. To reinforce the brand’s raucous image, Lambo is releasing a limited-run, rear-drive-only Gallardo stripped of extraneous luxury options and outfitted with the special edition’s raison d’etre: a manual transmission.
“It will be the least-gilded, back-to-basics stripped version,” promised Lamborghini of America chief operating officer Michael Lock. It was conceived, Lock said, when he realized that 2013 will be the end of the line for the traditional transmission at Lamborghini.
“We are in an era when customers demand technology and products that adapt to them,” not the other way around, as is required by Lamborghini’s famously finicky gated H-pattern shifter.
While seasoned experts like Valentino Balboni can row through the notchy gates as if they’re driving a Miata, the rest of us have to perfect our technique. How perfectly, anachronistically Italian. But Lamborghini buyers now choose the paddle-shifted transmission by 9:1 over the old do-it-yourselfer. There’s essentially no market for the stick.
The admission that this is Lamborghini’s last year of the manual transmission, along with the knowledge that, at nine model years old, the Gallardo is practically an antique compared to its rivals, implies that this is the end of the line for the car.
“It is the oldest supercar still standing, like a boxing champion,” crowed Lock. “It is defying the normal supercar product cycle. Can you imagine if Ferrari were still trying to sell the 360 Modena,” the Gallardo’s competitor at its debut?
It has been able to do that because of Lamborghini’s mechanistic styling language, Lock asserted. The organic forms preferred by Ferrari and others don’t age as well, while the overtly man-made lines of Lamborghinis since the Countach have in-your-face staying power. “It still has that drawn line,” Lock observed.
So what next? “With the replacement for the Gallardo, Lamborghini will be at a crossroads,” Lock explained. “The replacement for that car is pivotal.” That replacement has to preserve Lamborghini’s heritage of outrageous styling, as expressed most recently in the limited-edition Veneno, but in a form that can be manufactured and sold in the volume of the Gallardo, Lamborghini’s best-selling model ever.
Until the replacement comes, we can entertain ourselves with Lock’s pet project, the stripped-down, manual-transmission Gallardo send-off edition. It’s a sad good-bye of sorts, but it also means we shouldn’t have to wait too long to meet the Gallardo’s replacement and learn the name of a new fighting bull.
http://www.roadandtrack.com/go/futu...down-manual-transmission-sendoff-for-gallardo
