German Car Zone

Bartek Sikorski · 08-04-2009, 12:52 AM

Lamborghini's First Two-Wheeler in 10 Years

Quote:

In the fairly lonely farm country that surrounds Lamborghini headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, it can be a challenge on some hot summer days to invent the drama and beauty of Italy. Then again, hand us a 542-horsepower rear-wheel-drive Gallardo painted in 1970s-style smackdown Ithaca Green with a big white-and-gold stripe down the middle, and we could make beauty and drama happen in a damned landfill.
You're burning your retinas on the 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni and, trust us, you cannot wait to drive it someday. Not a Lambo test goes by without our trying desperately to force some hot oversteer out of the usual all-wheel-drive Gallardo or Murcièlago chassis. Until today, the best we could hope for was a long lateral push over a massive slab of real estate. Now we have it all.
The last Lamborghini for the street with rear-wheel drive was the Diablo GT in 1999, which came with a 567-hp 5,992cc V12 created for GT2 racing. Since then, only some track versions have come with 2WD, such as the Murcièlago R-GT in 2003 developed with Reiter Engineering and Audi Sport.
So, it's been awhile. Not that the standard Gallardo with all wheels tugging is a pushover, but it isn't much of an intriguing driver's challenge in that legendary stay-alert Italian way. So now this has all been resolved with the 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni.
All Hail Valentino!
Valentino Balboni is the most faithful and hard-working company test-driver Lamborghini will ever have in its history. He started back in April 1968 when he was 19 years old and continued until Italian government regulations forced him to retire as of October 2008. This is a Lamborghini lifer if ever there was one, and the man has witnessed it all.
On apprenticing with the legendary Bob Wallace, Lamborghini's first test-driver, Balboni recalls, "If you were in with Bob, you were fine. If you never managed to get in his good graces, then you were shut out. I remember doing one of our usual 1,000-km endurance runs from Bologna to Bari and back in a Countach and he didn't say but five words to me the whole way, and four of those were critiques of my driving."
On Ferruccio Lamborghini: "He hired me personally. He was really a good guy and he embodied that spirit of the independent benevolent company boss that still existed before the labor movement here in 1968. That was the dawn of the Miura and the final chapter of the original company. By then, Ferruccio had established a sense of mission and passion. We were all so young then and he was like a second papà."
Regarding the 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2, Balboni tells us, "Starting in the fall of 2008, I began getting phone calls from the technicians and they would ask me one question here and another there — what would I prefer in my ideal Lamborghini? After a while of this, I put it all together and went to ask them what they were doing calling me like this. Then around the time of my official retirement at 60, they came to me and told me what was up."
Balboni's Wish List
At the very least, anyone smart who has done a satisfying and crucial job for one company for 40 years knows what they like. "The most important ingredient for me," Balboni recounts, "was of course that the car be rear-wheel drive if at all possible. I learned all of my testing techniques driving some of the most exciting rear-wheel-drive sports cars, and I need that feel at the wheel and in the chassis if the car is to bear my name." (How many living guys can say this?)
Then Balboni requested that the standard shifter be a six-speed manual, even though he knows the vast majority of 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 buyers will choose the optional e-gear automated manual with column-mounted shift paddles as on our test car. Be a man! Shift it yourself! In this special case, we would stick with the manual, too, frankly.
He then naturally got into the suspension requests and there was the tire conversation, plus the inevitable (for a marketing and image maven like Lamborghini) paint and leather and wheel choices. There was also the chat about how to raise the threshold on stability-control intervention. It's also interesting that Balboni prefers to keep the ceramic brake discs as an option. It's a choice we understand as regards traditional pedal feel, but we do like our ceramics on such heady beasts as this.
Aesthetically speaking, the heritage-full Miura touches are plain to see on the outer paint mit stripes and inner leather echoing the stripes theme in Polar White leather. The 5.2-liter direct-injected V10 engine is naked under polycarbonate glass so you can contemplate its 542 hp at 8,000 rpm and 398 pound-feet of torque at 6,500 rpm.

Full article:edmunds

Merc1 · 08-04-2009, 01:24 AM

Still a hot car, but I see a Ferrari......

M

CarGuy · 08-04-2009, 01:43 AM

Damn, to hard to choose between this, the Scuderia and GT2.

I think it's easier to kill yourself than making a choice between these three.

Sunny · 08-04-2009, 03:53 AM

Probably the only car that makes even that green look good, imagine a 458 in that green - uggh!

But I still don't know this hardcore version makes 10 less HP.

DaSilva · 08-04-2009, 04:21 AM

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German Car Zone

Edmunds First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni