Lamborghini Murciélago LP640
Mad, bad and utterly wonderful to know
An alarming e-mail has just arrived from the public relations department at Honda. It says I recently test drove the new Legend and wonders when my review might appear in The Sunday Times.
This is all frightfully embarrassing because I can’t recall a single thing about it. It was a car. It came to my house. I drove it for a week. And then it was taken away. I remember it in the same way that I remember a single childhood sneeze — ie, I don’t remember it at all.
My wife says I came back from one drive in it moaning about the positioning of the headlamp switch, but she can’t remember what was wrong with it, or why we’d become so starved of normal conversation that I’d even brought it up.
It must, therefore, be an ideal car for those who’ve had Vauxhall Corsas all their lives and have now won the pools. You can continue to demonstrate your complete lack of interest in all things motoring with the more expensive and presumably larger Legend — and it will not annoy you in any way, except perhaps for the headlamp switch. Although we can’t be sure about that.
What I can be sure about is that the Legend is not alone. I’ve just been through my diary and it seems there are hundreds of other cars that have left no stain on my memory banks at all.
Only last week, while preparing a Top Gear item on affordable hatchbacks, I had to say to a researcher: “What is my opinion of the Renault Clio?” Happily, from his point of view, an archive of road tests on Times Online was able to provide an answer.
But now, a week on, I’m afraid it’s gone again. I either liked it very much, or I hated it. And I’m damned if I can remember which.
Then you have the Ford Galaxy. Apparently, I drove one two months ago, for seven days, and all I can recall is that it had stupidly hard seats. Engine? Space? Price? Sorry. It’s all a blank.
Strangely, when I first started writing about cars — or carts as they were called back then — I never forgot a thing. What’s more, I can still recall the “feel” of the engine cut-out switch in the Fiat Regata ES, and the exact lilac colour of the front seats in the Renault Fuego turbo.
So why can’t I remember modern cars? Well, put simply, they don’t have lilac seats or pointless cut-out switches. Many, I’m afraid to say, are nothing more than white goods.
If you go back to a time when buyers could choose between a Golf GTI and a Ford Escort RS2000, the differences between them were huge. Rear-wheel drive versus front-wheel drive. Carburettor versus fuel injection. Hatchback versus saloon. Tennis racket headrest inserts — I even remember that — versus the golf ball gearknob.
Now, though, if you step from the current Golf GTI into, say, a hot Renault Mégane, it’s no longer like moving through a wormhole in the space-time continuum. The only way you’ll find any differences at all is by burrowing into the brochures and examining the pricing of extras. This is not an interesting way of passing the time.
My worry is that if car makers don’t start putting a bit of soul and flair and engineering panache back into their cars — and I’m excluding Alfa Romeo and Citroën from this, because they do — pretty soon, motoring will cease to be something that’s fun.
And when that happens, you’ll not be comparing Volkswagens with Renaults. You’ll be comparing “the car” with “public transport”. And as often as not, you’ll find that “public transport” is cheaper and more convenient.
I remarked recently in these pages that a VW Golf GT had failed to make the journey from London to Cornwall anything more than a chore. It didn’t soothe, or excite, or do any of the things that a car must do if it’s to be something more than a personal transportation module.
And now we have the Honda Legend, a car so forgettable I can’t remember a single thing about it. Why use that for the drive into London when the train is faster, you don’t have to park it, you don’t have to pay a congestion charge, and you can while away the journey with your nose in Private Eye?
What’s more, the train might crash, which is a better foundation on which to build a conversation with your wife that night than the positioning of your Honda’s headlamp switch.
This brings us, of course, to the curious scissor door of the Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 — a car some of you may remember was featured on Top Gear recently. Unfortunately, a monstrous pressure on time that week meant the review was rather truncated, so I’d like to fill in the gaps here.
It is an astonishing car, this. Fitted with an enlarged 6.5 litre V12 engine, it develops a massive 495 carbon dioxides and that means the top speed is 211mph. On the short Top Gear runway, I had it up to an indicated 207, which is faster than any other car has managed.
So yes, the power and the noise that goes with it mean you are never likely to forget even the shortest drive. That’s good. But the main reason this car is so memorable comes when you get to a corner.
It’s fitted with a four-wheel-drive system that feeds the power to whichever axle is best able to use it. Fine, but it’s such a dim-witted set-up that you’re usually going backwards before it’s noticed the rear has lost traction and that it might be a good idea to shove some oomph up front.
Or, it decides that the rear could well lose traction due to the angle of the steering wheel and the speed, and feeds most of the power to the front. And any attempt to unstick the back with a boot full of power just means more and more understeer.
I couldn’t help wondering what this car might be like if it had a basic, rear-drive set-up. Lighter, for sure, and therefore faster too. Yes, in the rain, there might be a smidgeon less grip but, to balance that, it would be a lot more predictable. Better, in other words.
Audi, which has owned Lamborghini for nine years now, has tried to make the cars less wild and mad. You can see that in the styling, and in the headroom, but this handling quirk means it’s still far too much of a handful to be taken seriously as a driver’s car.
And that’s wonderful. Ferrari makes driver’s cars, machines for the terminally earnest. Lambo should be making stuff that puts a smile on your face, even when it’s standing still.
Even though I have ordered a Gallardo Spyder, I’m the first to admit it’s not quite as good as an F430 round a track. It’s less delicate. Less poised. But as a car, a mad, expensive, preposterous waste of money, the sheer force of its personality knocks the techno-Ferrari into a cocked hat.
This is why I still love the LP640. It’s flawed. It’s silly. It’s got a four-wheel-drive system that doesn’t really work, a sat nav screen that’s been put in place with hammers, and a steering wheel that’s coated in what appears to be a black version of Top Gear dog. Technically, it’s not even as good, I should imagine, as the new Honda Legend. But when it comes to memorable times, do you opt for dinner with a chartered accountant or Lemmy out of Motörhead?
Lamborghini is at the cutting edge of everything that makes cars interesting and exciting and wonderful. And we have to love it for that.
Vital statistics
Model
Engine
Power
Torque
Transmission
Fuel Lamborghini Murciélago LP640
6496cc, 12 cylinders
631bhp @ 8000rpm
487 lb ft @ 6000rpm
Six-speed paddleshift
13.2mpg (combined cycle)
2058mm CO2
Acceleration
Top speed
Price Rating
Verdict 495g/km
0-62mph: 3.4sec
211mph
£190,000
HHHHI
Flawed genius
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