Questions of Prototypes

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" LAMBORGHINI BUILDS GIGLIATO AEROSA:
Automobilia Lamborghini starts building Giglianto Design's Aerosa in August this year.
The 2 seater will be powered by a 4.8 LTR.Ford V8 egine which delivers enough power to accelerate the small car in 5 seconds to 100km/h".
:help:
Now:
This year?
Aerosa?
Ford?
Lamborghini!

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http://www.cardesignnews.com/events/...allner372.html

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[lambocars]

The Aerosa will NOT be built by Automobili Lamborghini SpA, this venture was started when the company was in Far Eastern hands, these days Audi AG owns it and they are not considering anything like this anymore.

Also the nice prototype from Cardesigns.com is just one of their designers ideas, it has absolutely nothing to do with the official Lamborghini designs.

Kind regards

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Lamborghini P538 Bizzarine,one rare model

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[a007apl]

"Automobili Lamborghini CEO Giuseppe Greco confirmed at the Detroit auto show that the automaker's L147 project will be unveiled between June and July, publicly debuting in September at the Frankfurt show and going on sale shortly after.

The L147 is the Lamborghini's first brand new car since 1990. Production is returning to over 300 units a year, pointing to 450 cars for 2002.

The first new Lamborghini since the Audi takeover in July 1998, the L147 is still without a proper name. "We selected eight possible names and we felt confident at least a couple of them could usable but, boy, our competitors have already deposited everything! We have already built the fifth prototype of the new car, but we had to begin again from scratch to search for its name", Greco said.

The L147 will be above the Diablo in terms of performance and features, but won't cost a lot more, as it benefits "of more modern production techniques and of the first synergies with Audi, mainly on the purchase of components", Greco said.

The L147 interior and exterior were penned by a Lamborghini-Audi common team, leaded by Luc Donkerwolcke, a young Belgian designer working at Audi styling center in Ingolstadt, Germany.

On the technical side, the L147 is very close to the Diablo, being based on a steel tubular frame coupled with carbon fiber body panels, while the roof and the doors are in aluminum.

The DOHC, 48 valve 6-liter V12 engine is an evolution of the Diablo 6.0 introduced at the Detroit show in January 2000. Power will be very close to 600 hp, confirming Lamborghini as the maker of the most powerful production car in the world.

The L147 will feature the first 6-speed gearbox in Lamborghini history, while it will be offered only with permanent four wheel drive, the VT (viscous traction) system introduced in 1994 on the Diablo. "All our normal production cars will come with 4WD standard, only limited editions or racing versions could be offered with rear wheel drive" said Greco. Lamborghini stopped to make 2WD normal Diablos in late 1998 and last summer completed the limited run of 80 Diablo GTs, a 2WD model too.

The L147, to be unveiled in the completely upgraded Lamborghini headquarters of Sant'Agata Bolognese, near Modena, will debut as a coupe. Other body variants, possibly a roadster, and more performing versions as SV and GT, most likely will follow. Instead of the model year concept, Lamborghini is planning to add new variants every year, Greco said.

On the number side, the L147 is being tooled for 2 units a day, or 450 pieces a year. The Diablo was tooled for 3 units a year, but only in its first full year was built in a significant volume - 672 units - shortly after falling in the region of a fraction more than a car a day, or 230-240 a year.

In 1998 Lamborghini built 231 cars, 265 in 1999 and 296 in 2000, considerably better that the 270 units budgeted.

The renewed Diablo 6.0 accounted for 201 units, plus 60 units of the GT and the final lot of 35 Roadsters for USA only.

USA remained by far Lamborghini's biggest market, absorbing 100 units, followed by Germany with 40 and Switzerland with 30 cars. Turnover for 2000 was not announced yet, but Greco said it will surpass Euro 50 million.

The plan for 2001 is to surpass 300 units, making over 100 Diablo 6.0 - that will remain in production also after the introduction of the new car - and about 200 units of the new L147.

Now that the L147 is almost finished, Lamborghini is rushing to add its second new car, the L140. Now expected to be unveiled in summer 2003, as the focal point of the company 40 year celebrations, it will boost the company production to 2,000 units a year, being planned for 1,500 cars at full stream. If launched today, the L140 could cost around $135-140,000.

The car will be brand new, featuring an aluminum spaceframe developed in cooperation with Audi. The entire body will also be in aluminum. Lamborghini is not confirming any technical detail on the L140, understood to feature a brand new 48-valve, V10 engine of over 4 liters and more than 400 hp, completely developed in Sant'Agata Bolognese. The L140, to be launched too as a 4WD coupe only, will come with a new 6-speed gearbox offered both in fully manual version and with a sequential, F1-style system. This clutch-free system is understood to be Magneti Marelli's Selespeed, already offered by Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Mercedes Benz. On the styling side, Greco said only the L140 was penned by an Italian, which prevailed in a design competition that saw 5 scale models coming from four different sources: Audi styling center and three Italians. According to rumors coming from Turin, for the L140 design Lamborghini called Stile Bertone, Italdesign-Giugiaro and a freelance, Marcello Gandini, who penned all the production Lamborghinis since the Miura. Italdesign is said to have prevailed, but Fabrizio Giugiaro, the head of Styling & Models division of the company met at the Detroit show, refused to comment. His father Giorgetto, in his 45 year career - first at Bertone and Ghia and then as an independent designer - penned exotic cars for Maserati, De Tomaso, Iso Rivolta and Lotus, but never a Lamborghini. With the L140, the son is said to have won where his father never managed to, as the new car is - according to a supplier involved in the project - the work of Fabrizio Giugiaro."

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"Lamborghini, long considered an also-ran to Ferrari, has its rival Italian automaker square in its sights as it gears up for a major assault on the lucrative North American supercar market. And the newly emboldened car builder known for its Countaches and Diablos is starting its push by recruiting key technical talent from Ferrari's own U.S. service organization.

Ken McKay, who ran Ferrari's U.S. service network for two decades until the 1990s, has already recently recruited several veteran Ferrari technicians for his fledgling, Boston-based Lamborghini Technical Services. "The key is to have the talent-we really needed a good couple of guys," said McKay. "I thought I did pretty good."

Pretty good? Though McKay's forays so far have provoked a simple "no comment" from Ferrari of North America, others in the Ferrari ranks see where this confrontation is headed. A Ferrari dealer who asked not to be identified said the days when Lamborghini was content to sell cars to buyers who weren't able to get a Ferrari may be numbered. "The first thing they need is spectacular product, which they don't have yet," said the dealer. "But it's not a question of 'if,' it's just a question of 'when' [Lamborghini will become a stronger competitor]."

Product is coming-thanks in no small part to Audi's acquisition of Lamborghini in 1998. Audi's parent company, Volkswagen, is known worldwide for its product leadership, and VW CEO Ferdinand Piech is bringing that same strength to bear on Lamborghini.

First up is the much-anticipated Diablo replacement, the L147. The super-luxury sports coupe will be unveiled in Frankfurt in September and will make its U.S. debut next January in Detroit. Deliveries of the first models to U.S. dealers could occur before the January showing.

Lamborghini CEO Giuseppe Greco has promised L147 will be better than the Diablo in performance and features. Pricing has not been determined.

The L147 will be powered by a dohc, 48-valve 6.0-liter V12-unique to Lambor-ghini-expected to produce about 600 horsepower. Like the Diablo, L147 is based on a tubular steel frame with carbon-fiber body panels and aluminum roof and doors.

Though the car will debut as a coupe, Greco says Lamborghini also plans each year to add other L147 variants, such as a roadster or higher-performance versions.

What Lamborghini is really after is a slice of Ferrari's bread-and-butter 360 Modena market. In summer 2003-Lamborghini's 40th anniversary-the company will end a two-decade hiatus from the medium-sized, mid-engined super sports car class: It will introduce a V10-powered, all-aluminum, all-wheel-drive coupe capable of rivaling the Ferrari's top seller. Reports that Lamborghini is drawing heavily on its Cala show car for the new L140 model mean the "baby Diablo" will likely come with Cala's 400-hp, 3.9-liter 40-valve V10. With a 2800-pound curb weight, the L140 is expected to turn five-second 0-to-62-mph times with a 180-mph top end. The Ferrari Modena has a 400-hp V8 capable of similar acceleration and speed.

For Lambo's product plan to work, the company must also boost production-and U.S. sales-if it aims to make serious inroads into Ferrari's market. With that in mind, Lambor ghini officials are preparing to build more than 400 L147s per year (35 percent earmarked for the States), along with at least 1500 L140s. That's a robust goal, considering Ferrari posted U.S. sales of 1024 cars in 2000. Lamborghini, by contrast, sold 30 cars here.

That's where McKay and his key service people come in, providing the kind of support that up to 18 U.S. dealerships will need to convince buyers that a Lamborghini should be their first choice.

"You want to try to give them the best technical support you can," said McKay. "
By BOB GRITZINGER

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