Lamborghini Portofino: Four Scissor Doors, Frankfurt 1987 If you drove a first-generation Dodge Intrepid, you drove the face of a Lamborghini. Chrysler built 645,281 of them between 1993 and 1997, and the nose on all of them traces back to a four-door Lamborghini prototype that was shown exactly once. The car is the Portofino, unveiled … Read more
Lamborghini Athon: 260 HP, No Roof, Turin 1980 Bertone brought a brand-new Lamborghini to the Turin motor show in April 1980. An open two-seater, futuristic, with a fully digital instrument panel and a single-spoke steering wheel. Lamborghini had been bankrupt for two years. A coachbuilder publicly unveiled a car for a client that was in … Read more
Lamborghini Bravo: 300 HP and 2,390 lb in 1974 A show car does not get driven. It is pushed onto the stand, lit, photographed and put away. The Lamborghini Bravo covered tens of thousands of test kilometers. American journalists drove it and published a verdict. And in April 1978, three and a half years after … Read more
Lamborghini Urraco, Silhouette and Jalpa: Eighteen Years of a V8 That Never Sold Lamborghini spent eighteen years trying to sell a small eight-cylinder sports car. Between the Urraco, the Silhouette and the Jalpa it managed roughly 1,255 cars. Ferrari, in the same segment with a single model, sold more than twelve thousand 308s. That is … Read more
Lamborghini Jarama: Ferruccio’s Own Favorite Asked which of his cars he preferred, Ferruccio Lamborghini did not say Miura. He said Jarama. And he said it late, in 1991, when he had nothing left to sell: he preferred it to all the others because it was the perfect compromise between the Miura and the Espada. That … Read more
Lamborghini Espada: The Four-Seat V12 That Started as a Jaguar Lamborghini’s family car was not drawn in Sant’Agata. It was drawn in London, over Jaguar mechanicals, on commission from a British newspaper. The wooden body buck built for that Jaguar was then reused to put together the first Espada prototype. None of that appears in … Read more
Fiat X1/9: the industrial mid-engine Bertone was hiding in a corner In 1971, Gianni Agnelli is making an informal visit to the Bertone factory in Grugliasco, on the outskirts of Turin. Nuccio Bertone walks him through the production halls, shows him models, talks him through current projects. And in a corner, between development cars and … Read more
Paolo Stanzani: “I’m Tired of Building Toys for Rich, Spoiled People” The Lamborghini Miura exists because two young Italian engineers were obsessed with a race car built in Dearborn, Michigan. That’s not a stretch. Ferruccio Lamborghini had explicitly forbidden his staff from building anything resembling a competition car — racing was an expense he had … Read more
Autobianchi: The Brand Fiat Used to Take Risks It Wouldn’t Sign Its Name To Almost nothing you drive today would exist in its current form without a company most Americans have never heard of. That’s not hyperbole and it isn’t nostalgia. If your car has its engine mounted sideways, driving the front wheels, with the … Read more
Lancia Sibilo: Gandini’s last wedge, a Stratos in alien clothing Picture this. Turin Motor Show, April 1978. The car industry is five years deep into a hangover that just won’t lift. The 1973 oil crisis has rewired everything. Big cars don’t sell anymore. Safety regulations are forcing designers to bolt rubber bumpers onto everything like … Read more
Alfa Romeo Montreal: The Prototype-Engined GT That Arrived Late to Its Own Party Picture this scenario. You have access to one of the most exotic V8s ever produced in 1960s European motor engineering: a 90-degree, 2.6-litre, twin-cam-per-bank, dry-sump, cross-plane-crankshaft, SPICA mechanical fuel-injected unit, derived directly from the Tipo 33 sports racing prototype that Autodelta had … Read more
Lancia Stratos HF Zero: the wedge that was 33 inches tall and won three world titles If you grew up watching Group B onboards, or if Sanremo and the Acropolis mean something to you because of Munari and the orange-and-white livery, you already know the Lancia Stratos. What you probably don’t know is that the … Read more
