Lamborghini Reventón review (2008 onwards model)

• What: Lamborghini Reventón
• Where: Sant'Agata, Italy
• Date: January 2008
• Price: £746,200
• Available: not anymore
• Key rivals: Pagani Zonda F, Bugatti Veyron, Learjet, Sunseeker 34M

Summary

The ultra-exclusive Reventón is revving it up for Lamborghini. We get to drive number 0 out of 20 on its native soil.

• Likes: Spectacular looks and performance, surprisingly civilized to drive, the ultimate in automotive rarity
• Dislikes: Seems churlish to even mention this, but it is rather expensive and you can't have one even if you could afford it, visibility challenging, you can't go anywhere without someone wanting to take a picture... or maybe take the car

The thing about the Hope diamond is that there is exactly one of them. Sure, it is big, and beautiful in its own right. But what really makes it valuable is its scarcity. And you can't get much scarcer than "one".

This was part of the thinking behind Lamborghini's decision to build an ultra-rare supercar, the new Reventón. There will be exactly 20 of these cars built, with a selling price of one million euros.

GALLERY: Lamborghini Reventón

First impressions

Just 20 cars? By that standard, the Ferrari Enzo and Porsche Carrera GT were Honda Civics. How successful will this strategy be? Will the ultra-rich go for such a plan? I guess the answer lies in the proper tense of the verb "to be". It is not a matter of "will be" but "has been" - the car was revealed to the public just last September at the Frankfurt Motor Show, and all 20 have already been sold. And one of them is coming to the UK: identity of buyer undisclosed.

Find more Reventón images from Live Search

This is especially remarkable given that the Reventón is based on the Murciélago LP640 coupe, which costs about one fifth of the Reventón's price tag. As the old saying goes, if you have to ask... Actually, there will be at least 22 Reventóns built, including the one that was on the stand of the Los Angeles Auto Show where the car had its formal North American public debut a few weeks ago, and car number "0 of 20'', the development prototype, which I had the privilege of driving in the hills around this suburb of Bologna recently.

Murciélago and Reventón share only windshield and mirrors, but those familiar with the former car will instantly see the connection to the latter.For example, the doors pivot upwards, as they have on all 12-cylinder Lambos since the Countach. Lamborghini says Reventón's styling was influenced by the F-22 Raptor jet fighter, hence is more angular, more extreme, than Murciélago, with massive air ducts everywhere to get oxygen and cool breezes to all the places that need either. Like its 'poor' cousin, Reventón is constructed of strong, lightweight carbon fibre panels, glued to the carbon fibre and steel chassis.

Carbon fibre blades screwed onto the spokes make the black aluminium wheels look like they came from a gigantic blender. The blades are intended to create a unique visual effect, but also help send cooling air to the brakes. In keeping with the jet fighter theme, all Reventóns will be painted what Lamborghini calls a 'mid opaque green grey without the usual shine'. Call it "stealth'', then. Looks appropriately sinister, yet eye-catching - a lot of cell phone batteries were harmed in the execution of my test drive, as every kid in Sant'Agata had to take a picture of this thing as we flew by.

Performance

The Reventón has 10 more ponies than the Murciélago, but Lamborghini gives the same performance numbers: 0 - 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds, and a top end over 340 km/h. Not that I went that fast - as noted, this particular car was a development prototype, was speed-restricted to 130 km/h, and the traction control system off-switch had been deactivated. I guess Lamborghini wanted to make sure that the fewer than two dozen journalists who were to drive this car each had their shot, perhaps mindful of the American journo who trashed the very first Diablo during a press preview drive. (I was the guy waiting at the hotel to get into the car next.)

No conventional manual transmission will be offered in Reventón, only Lamborghini's Formula One-style eGear automated manual transmission with steering wheel paddles. The Automatic mode is disabled - you do have to shift for yourself. Like all current Lambos, Reventón has full-time four-wheel drive. Out of respect for the car, I asked Moreno Conti, one of Lamborghini's test drivers, to take the first stint behind the wheel, to warm the car up and allow me to get a bit familiar with it from the right seat.

Driven: Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera

Apart from some impossibly narrow laneways he chose - we did have to back up once for a gigantic farm tractor - the Reventón felt pretty docile. And so it proved to be when I took over. It quite naturally feels a lot like the Murciélago, since underneath, not much has changed. You still sit a bit off-set to the left of the steering wheel - or at least it feels that way. You still try to remember how to best shift the eGear transmission to reduce shift shock. And visibility to just about every direction, but notably to the rear and rear three-quarters, is marginal.

Ride and handling

You'd expect a car like this to be prodigiously fast, to grip the pavement in the corners like lichen hanging on to a rock, to brake like you've run into an invisible mattress, to make exhaust noises that seem to come from the very bowels of hell. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, respectively. Perhaps influenced by the video game instrument panel, it felt almost unworldly to accelerate this fast. Is that a windshield or a really sophisticated plasma monitor? Are those real Fiats, Vespas and Apecars backing up towards me at the apparent speed of light or mere digital representations? Um, no - those are the real deal. This car defines fast.

You might not expect the car to ride so smoothly, to be so easy to steer, to in fact be so civilized. Or to be so beautifully finished inside - until you remember that Lamborghini is owned by Audi, the industry leaders in interior design and execution. It could indeed be a daily driver, although there's as much chance of any of the 20 lucky owners using the car that way as they would use a Jean-Paul Riopelle to hide a nasty stain that's lying there on their bedroom wall.

Lamborghini Murciélago LP640

Interior

The interior is also Murciélago-based, but trimmed in aluminium, carbon fibre, Alcantara and leather, the soft materials carrying on the gray-green-olive colour scheme. In the big aluminium instrument binnacle lurks a digital dash to end all digital dashes. At the touch of a button you can call up two different displays, one with semi-conventional circular gauges, the second with a big digital speedometer on the right and a bizarre tachometer on the left. This latter item looks like the letter A with the top third chopped off. As revs rise, green lines climb up each leg of the A, connected by a yellow line which also runs through the gear ratio you're in - these numbers rise in the middle of this display.

Rev hard in first, then, the green lines rise like a pair of hyperkinetic thermometers, and the yellow line joining the two scales looks like a spider on steroids doing push-ups. Select second, the yellow line jump-shifts up about half a centimetre to 2, still connecting the two green rev-counting lines. Yes, it is hard to visualize, and I apologize for my limited skill at trying to describe in words what can only really be seen in the pictures. But it is unlike any gauge you've ever seen - unless maybe you fly an F-22 for a living.

Driven: Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 Roadster

I can't see this catching on as it is. What might be a portent for the future is the concept of a re-configurable instrument panel, by which each driver could call up whichever information he or she feels is desirable, and perhaps even influence how that information is conveyed. Regardless of which read-out you choose, it is surmounted by a semi-circle with grid lines on it, and a small green circle in the middle. This is a g-force metre - the green circle moves forward, back, right and left around as you accelerate, brake, or corner, tracing your friction circle as you drive.

The MSN Cars verdict: 5/5

The Reventón is an automotive work of art that will be purchased for the sake of ownership, rather than the pleasure of driving. Not that there isn't great driving pleasure to be had. But I expect most owners will restrict their seat time to race tracks during lapping days. Or maybe they already have their own race track. Because something like the Reventón is so valuable, so rare, so attention-grabbing (possibly from the wrong sorts of people) that taking it on the street might just not be wise. I glad I got my chance. And for sure it'd be more fun than putting your Jean-Paul Riopelle in your MPV and just driving around.

Ratings out of five: Lamborghini Reventón

Need to know

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