Driver's Notebook: Close Encounters of the Fast Kind
August 1, 2008
"Uh-oh." I looked over to see my provisional photographer and temporary chauffeur, Robert Kerian, frowning into the rearview mirror. His focus on the long, flat, empty stretch of two-lane desert highway—over which we were traveling at an indicated 200 kilometers per hour—had apparently shifted to something behind us. The flashing red and blue strobes might be called a UFO, if you translate the acronym, as Kerian did: "Uniformed F-ing Officer." Not surprisingly, our bright-yellow Lamborghini Gallardo had attracted the attention of local law enforcement.
With Las Vegas more than 30 miles behind us, Kerian and I had nearly arrived at our destination: a dry lakebed in the middle of the Nevada desert, where we were planning a sunset photo shoot of the car. Conspiracy theorists and X-Files or Indiana Jones devotees will tell you that this area is the nuclear-testing and extraterrestrial-capturing capital of the world. In fact, photos of the scenery could be mistaken for Martian landscapes. Beyond alien, these surroundings inspire daydreaming—and speeding.
The sheriff was visible in our mirrors from more than a mile away. To him, our dazzlingly blonde exotic must have appeared to be the visual equivalent of Italian actress Virna Lisi in her prime, streaking down the road. The new Gallardo is capable of 202 mph (up from the 196 mph maximum velocity of last year’s model), a top speed that could easily outpace even the most determined officer. Kerian might have fantasized about outrunning those lights, except—cue Martha and the Vandellas—we had nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. Instead, Kerian pulled two of the Gallardo’s 19-inch wheels and their low-profile Pirelli tires onto the soft shoulder, and we waited. If only we had planned an appropriate soundtrack, we could have listened to Martha’s "Nowhere to Run" and made it halfway through "Motoring" by the time the black-and-white Ford Crown Victoria squad car finally caught up.
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Luckily, Lamborghini had satiated my need for speed earlier that day by providing unlimited laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Journalists in more than a dozen second-generation Gallardos followed factory drivers in Murciélagos around the banked oval and the winding road course.
On the track, it was surprisingly easy to keep pace with the big bulls. The Gallardo LP560-4’s power output is now just 80 hp shy of the Murciélago LP640, if you keep score using European-spec dynamometers. But at just over 3,300 pounds, the Gallardo weighs a whopping 363 pounds less than its scissor-doored sibling. That power-to-weight ratio means the new Gallardo will accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds—an elapsed time only three-tenths of a second slower than the Murciélago’s. Yes, the Gallardo—long known as the "baby" Lamborghini by motoring cognoscenti—is all grown up.
Of course, comparing Murciélagos to Gallardos is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. For more of an orange-to-orange assessment, the LP560-4 is also 44 pounds lighter and three-tenths of a second quicker than last year’s Gallardo. At $201,000 (plus $10,000 for the optional automated manual transmission and approximately $16,000 for carbon-ceramic brakes), the base LP560-4 is $11,000 more expensive than last year’s Gallardo. Factor in the dollar’s weakness against the euro, however, and the new Gallardo could be considered a sort of economic stimulus package for Italian car enthusiasts.
To keep up with the Joneses—or in this case, the Ferraris—the base-level sports coupe from Sant’ Agata Bolognese has undergone extensive mechanical updates and aesthetic revisions (the Gallardo Spyder carries over unchanged from last year). The Gallardo’s alphanumeric surname says a lot: LP denotes longitudinale posteriore, or the engine’s longitudinal orientation and mid-mounted position; 560 indicates its metric horsepower output; and the hyphenated number 4 refers to the four driven wheels, which under normal driving conditions apportion 30 percent of available torque to the front and the remaining 70 percent to the rear.
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