Lamborghini Marks The End Of Its Murcielago Supercar

Lamborghini marked the end of the line today for its Murciélago, a big, brutal, 12-cylinder sports car that nearly a decade ago began a successful run for the Italian exotic-car maker under Volkswagen ownership.



Perhaps most striking about the car is that most of the superlatives it represented when new seem almost quaint today. The original car’s 571 horsepower was outrageous in 2002 and put the Murcielago on a high-performance pedestal. Today Chevy Corvettes, Cadillacs and Nissans are all in the same neighborhood. Its roughly three-and-a-half second zero-to-60 run is still pretty quick, but the Lambo has a lot more company in that bracket now.

Sure, the company has been tweaking the car almost continuously over the years and the last model, an LP 670-4 Superveloce, is a bit faster and more refined than the first. But still, supercars don’t seem as super, when compared with everyday models, as they used to. Seriously –if that grandmother in the turbocharged Subaru gets the jump on you at the next traffic light, you may as well give up.

Despite all that, the Murcielago still ranks as my favorite test drive — ever. It was March , 2002, I had a metallic yellow test car for the weekend and a route mapped out to the Berkshires — a round trip just over 300 miles.

The out-and-back drive was a blast, whether on the highway or twisting back roads. Listening to the V-12 engine’s bellowing exhaust sound and watching other drivers reactions was as much fun as the driving itself. Our test car had a six-speed manual transmission with a heavily sprung clutch and a metal gate that helped guide the lever into the right gear. The result of the latter was a mechanical “clank” with shifts. It contributed to an overall feeling – a rewarding one — of working inside a machine.

Supercars nowadays usually have “paddle”-style hand-controls for shifting gears and no clutch pedal at all. They are similar to shifters found in many racing cars, but I still find them wimpy. For me the original Murcielago was the last of the alpha-male exotic cars.

Even though the last Murcielago, number 4099, rolled out of the factory on May 11, the company celebrated the occasion today with an exhibition of the most important 12-cylinder cars of Lamborghini’s history and a parade in its hometown of Sant’Agata Bolognese. Look for a successor next year.