My favourite Lambo

An LP400 Countach Periscopio is a contender, simply because it looks so utterly incredible. I remember seeing one at the factory when I visited with my father many years ago. I’d never really been a fan of the Countach until then, but I was utterly bewitched by that slice of simple and sharp design. Marcello the Magician; Gandini the Genius. I actually think it’s more of a knee-trembler than a Miura. So, there.

However, at the top of my personal Lamborghini list is a Murcielago, specifically the incredible LP670-4 SV. With the ultimate iteration of Giotto Bizzarrini’s V12 (which lived from 1964-2010, unlike the great man himself who’s now homing in on his 96th birthday) and a tremendous chassis to show it off, the SV is a magnificent beast of a car. I can recall snippets of some amazing drives in the Highlands of Scotland and the wilds of Wales, but it is actually a slightly damp, grey morning in Bedfordshire that’s lodged most vividly in my mind.

I can’t remember why, but we had to run performance figures on the car on a Saturday. Now, at evo we used to test everything two-up and so I co-opted my friend Phil to come along and sit in the passenger seat minding the test gear. He seemed quite excited, which was nice.

We turned up to Millbrook Proving Ground’s mile straight and met the two people from Lamborghini who were there to keep an eye on things. I think one might have checked the tyre pressures, but otherwise there wasn’t a great deal to do. I suspect they just felt they should be around because it was the era when Ferrari was sending over whole pit crews and ex-F1 drivers to make sure magazines were wringing the best possible performance from its (completely standard, I’m sure) cars.

Anyway, we began with the easy stuff, which was doing the in-gear figures. Make sure you’re in manual mode, trickle off the line and accelerate slowly pulling the right-hand paddle repeatedly until you’re in the desired gear at as low revs as possible. You then floor the throttle and run the ratio all the way to the limiter or, in the case of sixth, until you run out of mile. There wasn’t a breath of wind, but I did them both ways because we always did. The mile straight is completely level, but there’s always the curvature of the earth to consider…

Next up was the 100-0mph test. ABS makes this pretty easy, because you just hit the brake pedal as hard as possible. But you do have to stand on it surprisingly hard. Phil had a bit more to do as well, because you can’t just hover at 100mph and then hit the brakes: you have to be accelerating hard and then try to switch pedals at just the right moment, so he needed to shout out the numbers on the VBox’s digital display every 10mph.

Then it was time for the big one; The standing start in order to glean the all-important 0-60mph time. This should have been easy, because the Murcielago has launch control, but it was slightly curious. You had to engage Corsa mode, make sure the traction control was turned off, select first gear and then stamp on the throttle. At this point there was the impression of an electronic brain startled into life as it cottons onto the request, applies appropriate revs and then dumps the clutch in short order.

After a few runs, a far-from-shabby 3.4sec seemed to be as good as it was going to get. The Lamborghini officiators were informed and a call was made to Italy. They could have been on the blower to the Pope for all I know, but after much nodding and ‘si…si…ciao’ it was decreed I should have another go. I tried again and got the same 3.4sec result, but as this put us at the far end of the mile, I thought I might as well try one more.

Now, using all the knowledge I’d learned from my elders and betters (and Jethro) I had been toying with the grip through first gear, trying to feather the throttle minutely to maximise traction. But then I remembered that just occasionally it worked well if you were a bit more flamboyant, particularly when the power was going to all four wheels. In the B7 Audi RS4, for example, you could simply bounce the revs off the limiter and then dump the clutch to achieve a perfect launch.

So, this time, instead of trying to quell the Murcielago’s wheelspin, I decided I would try to ride it out. I dialled in the glorious and slightly intimidating cacophony of V12 revs one more time and then…all hell broke loose. As the torque was released to the driveshafts, the SV immediately spun up all four wheels, took a few degrees of attitude and set off like a startled young bullock.

I remember having to use a decent bit of corrective lock all the way through first gear, like a Spitfire pilot needing a bit of rudder on take-off to cancel out the torque reaction of his Merlin. I remember watching the rev counter, listening to every minuscule change in pitch of the V12 and feeling the throttle pedal as I tried to keep the wheels spinning but not flaring. I pulled the upshift paddle just as the needle passed 8000rpm, second gear slammed home, the whole car snapped straight, traction became absolute and it reeled in the tarmac all the way to over 170mph.

The result was 0-60mph in 3.2 seconds and a memory that will stay with me (and Phil) forever. I’ve been quicker in plenty of other cars since, but none has matched the all-consuming drama and sound of that SV. I can feel my pulse racing slightly as I sit here writing about it 13 years later. That’s why, scintillating though the new STO is, I think the Murcielago SV remains my favourite Lamborghini of them all.