may 2012 Auto India 77
in focus lamborghini gallardo
78 Auto India may 2012
Street Brawler Lamborghini’s rear-wheel-drive Gallardo LP550-2 gets unleashed on the streets of Mumbai Text: Cyrus Dhabhar
Photos: Makarand Baokar
may 2012 Auto India 79
in focus lamborghini gallardo
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t is 05:30am on a quiet Saturday morning. The residents of the world famous Marine Drive Boulevard are soundly sleeping in their posh apartments overlooking the Arabian Sea. Little do they know that their morning is going to be enlightened with the majesty of an Italian V-TENor giving a performance good enough to bring Luciano Pavarotti back to life. The LP550/2 looks like it is going fast even when it is standing still; and that is precisely the kind of character you expect every supercar to exude. But the Gallardo is more than just a typical shouty, low slung, mid-engined supercar with its ‘Look at ME!’ yellow paint. Drive her at a leisurely pace and most people won’t even notice you; that is, until they see the car of course. But why would one buy a Gallardo to drive it slowly? Now, don’t get us wrong, we don’t encourage anyone to drive fast, but the Gallardo is one of those cars that you have to experience with a fair bit of shouting and speed. Pull the delicately shaped paddle on the left and it shifts down with such ferocity and power that it might shift around some of your bones and organs and before you know it you are doing speeds well above most family cars sold in India can manage. But the speed alone is not what really makes one sit up and beg for more; it is the overall package it delivers. 80 Auto India may 2012
The Gallardo as a package may well be an intimidating one, especially the LP550-2 with its very un-Lamborghinish rear-wheeldrive setup and its razor-sharp steering and stiff ride, but at the same time, it encourages the driver to push that little bit harder. Sure, the ride offered by the stiff suspension and
the low-profile tyres would leave you longing for a good massage, but at least you won’t need one with a happy ending as going back to driving the Gallardo is a good enough alternative. Now, as much as we hate talking about the next bit, in the interests of being fair, we
have to. Possibly the worst aspect about the Gallardo we drove is the interior. When you spend a fortune on a car, you expect the interior to make you feel special; the Gallardo does not make you that way. It is cramped, uncomfortable and feels, at most, flimsy. The plastic quality on the door handles and the centre console feels like they have been made from the leftover bits and pieces from a children’s toy factory in China. We have all heard stories about how the accelerator and brake pedals on Lamborghinis are off centre, but until you actually get in one and drive it, you have no idea how cumbersome it
actually is to use the pedals, especially when you need to brake really hard; which you will need to often, considering the 550 horsepower you are lugging around. The brakes are also possibly the only mechanical aspect of the car that is a thorough let down. The LP550-2 we drove had the standard steel disks as compared to the industry standard carbon ceramic brakes that most supercars are expected to have. And personally, we would have preferred the latter as the ones on the car lacked the confidence building feeling on the rest of the package. We assume the brakes would
have felt much better after they were warm and ready, but if you are out on a Sunday morning drive with your shiny new Lamborghini, are you really going to spend a few minutes warming the brakes up so you can enjoy the experience or would you expect the brakes to be as perfect as the rest of the car? In a nutshell though, we know the baby Lambo is due for a replacement soon as it is at the end of its life cycle, but as a product, the LP550-2 is possibly one of the finest driver’s cars out there in the world today. Now go out there, work that little bit harder, get yourself one and when you find that bump-free stretch of open road, make sure to pull hard on the paddle on the left and take yourself to ‘Warp Speed’. Captain Kirk would gladly give up the USS Enterprise for a Gallardo. may 2012 Auto India 81