$300,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Destroyed
This marks the 2nd time the next-generation supercar has been totalled on public roads - and it's not even available on the market yet!

Monday, June 19, 2006

Lamborghini officially unveiled the next generation Murcielago, known as the LP640, at the Geneva Motor Show this past March. Originally projected to hit the streets in spring, the date had been pushed back to September, which means this exotic is not yet available for consumers.

Lamborghini is on schedule to produce a total of 300 units this year, all of which have already been sold out. Although the LP640 is not yet available to the public, there are a handful currently being driven on public roads usually with automotive journalists or Lamborghini drivers behind the wheel.

That's why it comes as a shock that not only one, but two of these pre-production models has already been wrecked on public roads. The most recent being in St. Andrae, Austria on June 15, 2006.
According to witnesses, the Lamborghini lost control and crashed into a tree after attempting to pass another vehicle. The car burst into flames - the driver had to be flown to a nearby hospital after suffering severe burns. The Lamborghini was on its way to a press event at the time of the accident.
Although it's not unusual for exotic cars to be wrecked on test tracks prior to full production, it is rare to see wrecks piling up on public roads when there are only a handful of the cars available. The question begs, is the LP640 more difficult to handle than its predecessor or is this simply a case of bad luck? Lamborghini Murcielago LP640
The LP640 certainly has more power, adding 6 mph to the Murcielago's top speed and slashing the 0-60 mph acceleration from 3.8 seconds down to 3.4 seconds. But more power doesn't necessarily make a car harder to handle. The LP640 is still very similar to the older Murcielago which is not without controversy. There is at least one case of an owner who claims the car simply veered off the road by itself, causing a terrible rollover accident. The owner even created a web site documenting the accident and his concern over the safety of the Murcielago.

On the site, he writes:

"The car suddenly turns right on the Autobahn which is straight, dry and in quite good condition with hardly any traffic, and after a very fast 90 degree turn goes through the guard rail and then lands with the top down in a forest about 150 meters from the place where the guard rail was broken through. The possibility of a tire failure is being eliminated by experts, also the road was in good condition and no hindrances."

First LP640 Wreck
The first accident involving the LP640 occurred a few months ago. Details on the crash are sketchy, but the car was apparently being tested on public roads when it lost control, hit a guardrail on the highway and rolled over.

Obviously, it's always a concern when a high-performance vehicle is wrecked during pre-production. On the brighter side, engineers do get an opportunity to fine-tune and correct any issues that might be responsible for the accidents.

Safety has become a big issue for exotic car manufacturers lately, especially after a recent lawsuit was filed against Porsche for "selling an unsafe car". The suit claims the Porsche Carrera GT has design defects that make it a poor-handling car, mainly that the rear end can lose traction easily. The suit also claims that the car is too difficult to handle at high speeds for the average driver without instruction. The suit was filed by the wife of Cory Rudl, an internet marketing superstar who was killed when the Carrera GT he was riding in crashed at a track.

Many people feel drivers of exotic cars should realize that getting into a high performance vehicle has inherent risks that you won't find with your average car. Whether or not the manufacturers should be held liable for inexperienced drivers is a matter of debate we'll see played out with the Porsche lawsuit. As for the LP640, only time will tell whether or not the car has any handling issues. Out of the 300 that will be produced this year, keep an eye out on how many end up on WreckedExotics.

Something evil this way comes

By Andy Enright
Date posted: 07-07-2006

It's a little disquieting to think there are people out there in the community at large who feel that the 6.2-liter Lamborghini Murciélago is a little under-endowed with a mere 570 horsepower at its disposal. Still, it's a fact that upstarts like the Koenigsegg CC8S can deliver more punch, not to mention hypercars like the Porsche Carrera GT, the Ferrari Enzo and the outlandish Bugatti Veyron. Lamborghini, once the exemplar of automotive extremity, found its flagship out-muscled by some prêt-a-porter Mercedes-Benz models. Corrective action was required and the 640-hp 2006 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 is the result.

Don't bother fronting up at a Lamborghini dealer with a billfold the size of a wrestler's neck. Every LP640 produced has already been snapped up, but Sant'Agata didn't invest millions in a car that would only be enjoyed by a privileged few. Virtually every aspect of this car will filter down into the 2007 model-year Murciélago. The 6.5-liter V12, the carbon-ceramic brakes and the Enzo-humbling acceleration courtesy of Lamborghini's "Thrust" launch control will make next year's Murci that rarest of things — a supercar bargain.

Symphony for the devil
Figuring that it would represent a slightly easier baptism on Tuscany's Mugello race circuit, I opted for an LP640 with the six-speed e-gear sequential manual (paddle-shift) transmission. One of Lamborghini's senior suits reckoned only around 30 percent of customers opted for e-gear, a figure no doubt helped by the system's reputed appetite for clutch plates. Stephen Winkelmann, president and CEO of Lamborghini, sits alongside. I ponder my place in Lamborghini folklore if I wrap the car around the Armco with Lambo's head as my co-pilot.

The Murciélago's trucklike amble at low revs gives little clue as to the apocalyptic power delivery that awaits. Snick 3rd with a small lift of the long-travel accelerator and reacquaint it with the bulkhead, however, and there's a properly quick surge at 3,000 rpm, which gathers at 4,500 as the exhaust clears its throat followed by the all-wheel-drive system shuttling torque to the rear and the most magnificent feral yowl up to redline that's now pegged at 8,000 rpm. Grab for the next gear and you can feel the accelerative Gs weighting your very fingertips, the scenery exploding through the widescreen windshield. No lift this time. Winkelmann grins.

The first corner of Mugello approaches, and with a glorious brap-brap we drop two gears while giving the ceramic brakes something to consider. With substantial 15-inch-diameter discs at the front, it takes awhile to tune your braking efforts in; the first few corners seeing the Murciélago pull up with yards in hand. Getting back on the gate after trail braking brings the massive slug of V12 aluminum behind your right shoulder back to life. With no stability control system, it's down to you to keep it tidy. After two laps, I'm utterly wrung out, my eyeballs gritty, prickly heat rising up my back, and a massive surge of adrenaline leaving me a little juiced and shaky. This thing is Colonel Kurtz-made metal.

Got Götterdämmerung?
The Audi influence is never that far from the latest Murciélago. Nothing falls off and the "dynamic press launch" is run with Teutonic efficiency. The days of turning up at Sant'Agata to be kept waiting for hours for a car in a nicotine-stained waiting room while apologetic secretaries mother you with endless thimblefuls of syrupy espresso are long gone. The LP640 interior is treated to quality switchgear and cowhide with lozenge-shaped stitching, and a hefty Kenwood stereo/sat-nav screen. Carbon-fiber detailing is an expensive option.

A single exhaust so large you'd need to check it for bums in the morning is the most arresting exterior change, but there are also new Hermera alloy wheels that resemble shurikens, a sharper and more Gallardo front spoiler, and taillamps that glow like incandescent biohazard signals. The flanks are now asymmetrical, with a vented slash on the right-hand side and a dark maw hiding the oil cooler on the left. Underneath, there are uprated springs, stabilizers and shocks.

One of the most difficult jobs at Lamborghini must be deciding when aspects of the cars become clichés or parodies of themselves. The scissor doors remain and the firing order of the 12 cylinders is still etched into the cam cover. Originality buys a lot of goodwill and Lamborghini gets away with features that come off as hokey when others imitate. The numbers (1-7-4-10-2-8-6-12-3-9-5-11) are now a little more prominent, housed under a clear glass engine louver.

That wrecking ball of a V12 likes to give off a traditionally agricultural vibe, but in truth it's now an unremitting tech fest. Fully 90 percent of this power plant has been revised from the cylinder head and intake system to the crankshaft, camshafts and exhaust. In uprating the 6.2-liter engine, torque and driveability were key targets for improvement, and a continuously variable timing system on both the intake and exhaust sides coupled with a drive-by-wire engine-management system softens the initial throttle tip-in, but then deals a better hand every time, the redline rising by 500 crushingly exploitable rpm.

The hot seat
Fifteen laps in and the groove is forming. Mugello is no longer a staccato lunge toward the next forbidding crest and an embarrassed tiptoe over. Each corner now offers flow and possibilities to explore the 2006 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640's playful side. Get a handle on the sheer physics of this thing and the LP640 is, on occasion, fairly benign, the almost pornographic girth getting lost when the leviathan Pirelli P Zero Rossos are bested by 487 pound-feet of torque and skim into those fleeting moments of neutrality. I return to pit lane wearing a grin wide enough to swallow a wok.

Lamborghini’s smiling senior test driver Valentino Balboni celebrates his 38th anniversary with the company the day before our arrival at the factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese on a quiet Saturday when the air is still, the traffic relatively light, and northern Italy seems to be down for a nap.

Soon we are driving the 632-hp Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 behind Balboni, who is in his green Audi A4 diesel, and we can’t keep up. That’s because the narrow farm roads around the Lamborghini factory in Sant’Agata, Italy, have three lanes, two visible ones for routine traffic and one invisible lane just for Balboni. He darts into it frequently to pick off slowpokes, the obliging Fiats moving to the right with barely a flashed headlight of complaint. The 81.0-inch-wide LP640, in our abnormally cautious hands, snorts and burbles and falls steadily behind.



When the road clears, the new Murciélago, expected in U.S. showrooms by about the time you read this, at an estimated base price of $320,000, slips its leash with a mighty wail from its goggling mono-pipe. The road stripes blur as usual in a Lamborghini, but the vibe is different. The sluggish preamble, the trawling through lower, lesser-energized revs before the megaton explosion that was noted in our previous Murciélago test [C/D, July 2003], is gone.

The windup to warp speed happens in one long, startlingly smooth blast of intoxicating bull power. Better still, the clutch engages with a light pedal and facile fluidity, the bulky all-wheel-drive powertrain as tractable and complacent as a Honda’s from stoplight to stoplight. The LP640 is still a supercar by an older definition, meaning that it pushes and pogos and feels generally gargantuan. But the Murciélago now serves horsepower every bit as civilized as that from its nearby competitors at Il Cavallino Modenese.

What happened was an engine redesign. The 572-hp, 6.2-liter dry-sump V-12 became a 6.5, going up a millimeter in bore size and 2.2mm in stroke. Everything from the crank mains up was redesigned to extract more power, flatten the delivery of the 487 pound-feet of torque, and improve emissions, starting with reshaped combustion chambers in new cylinder heads. Variable-valve-timing mechanisms on both sets of cams are now rotary-type with infinite variability; before, it was a two-step system. The multichamber intake plenum changed from a crossflow to a vertical downdraft, the air ramming through oval tubes straight into larger valves.

Lamborghini, which proudly makes its own engine computers, completely rewrote the software (no doubt with some input from parent company Audi) to accommodate the new hardware. The engineers say they also cut 60 pounds out of the engine compartment.

You’ll know the LP640 by its larger oil-cooler scoop — there are almost 13 quarts on tap — on the driver’s-side rocker panel. A chin spoiler, a rear aerodynamic undertray, and a see-through engine cover are other cues to the LP640’s newness, as are redesigned taillamps and bumpers. Inside, the leather is crisscrossed by a modish diamond-pleat stitch pattern, and the dull instrument cluster finally gets — ta-dum! — a Lamborghini logo. In a few more years it may get chrome rings, too.

Ironically, for a car built in Italy, the Murciélago seems less suited to pinched Italian roads than any vehicle made — except for maybe Jay Leno’s tank rod. It’s a daunting challenge to make it look fast in pictures, so we asked Balboni, a man with more miles in Lamborghinis than anyone else alive, to steer for a few cornering shots. On the second run, the LP640 abruptly lost its footing in some sand, spun backward, and clonked a sign post. We stared, too shocked to speak, weep, or laugh at our rotten karma. Balboni got out and studied the mildly dimpled bumper and cracked taillight with an embarrassed frown. “Game over,” he said.

Even after 38 years, Balboni’s game, like Lamborghini’s, seems far from over.

Vehicle type: mid-engine, 4-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door coupe
Estimated base price: $320,000
Engine type: DOHC 48-valve V-12, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 396 cu in, 6496cc
Power (SAE net): 632 bhp @ 8000 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 487 lb-ft @ 6000 rpm

Transmissions: 6-speed manual, 6-speed manual with automated shifting and clutch
Wheelbase: 104.9 in
Length/width/height: 181.5/81.0/44.7 in
Curb weight: 3850 lb
Performance ratings (mfr’s est):
Zero to 62 mph: 3.4 sec
Top speed (drag limited): 211 mph
Projected fuel economy (C/D est):
EPA city driving: 9 mpg
EPA highway driving: 13 mpg