2012 Lamborghini Aventador 2dr Cpe on 2040-cars

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Lamborghini unveils 50th anniversary Aventador Roadster and Gallardo

Though hardly moving into Porsche levels of 50th Anniversary celebrations, Lamborghini is taking its own golden jubilee pretty seriously. The Italian company treated the world to a 50 Anniversario version of the Aventador LP720-4 earlier this year in Shanghai. At this year's swanky show at The Quail during Pebble Beach weekend, Lamborghini is showing off the convertible version of the car, the very sultry Aventador LP 720-4 Roadster 50 Anniversario.
What's more, the company has brought along the anniversary-treated Gallardo LP560-2 50 Anniversario as well, which we officially saw for the first time in China. Hey, a stage full of Lambos is no bad thing in our book.
As the coupe version before it, the 50th Anniversary Aventador has been massaged to make a full-bodied 720 horsepower from its stunning 6.5-liter V12, as well as done up with special edition paint and badging. A subtlety redesigned front splitter will call out the limited run Aventador Roadster to those in the know, too. Enough reading; check out both the Aventador Roadster and the celebratory Gallardo, live from the show stand at The Quail, in our attached galleries of images.

Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.

2015 Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster Review

"Lamborghini Murcielago." That's what I would tell anyone who asked what my favorite car was. Yes, there were easier cars to drive than the wailing wraith from Sant'Agata Bolgnese, and that was partly why I liked it so. It was impossible to see out the back – reversing was easiest done with the door open, sitting on the sill. My head banged the door frame when I checked traffic on the left. The seat made my butt hurt. The cabin ergonomics were based on a design language that humans haven't yet translated. It boiled over in stop-and-go traffic. It was big. Yet it drove like nothing else, with the instant zig-zag reflexes of a mako designed in The Matrix. The Murcielago's thrills weren't laid out on the ground, you had to dig for them with your bare hands. And that's what made it outstanding. When I first drove the Aventador at its launch in Rome, I spent the day blasting around the circuit at Vallelunga. It was so easy to drive – "too easy by half," as Jeremy Clarkson would later say of it – viciously quick, unholy fun, and very good. But it was a little too easy to drive. Which is why the Murcielago remained my favorite car, ever. Until two weeks ago. The Aventador came when the rough-diamond Gallardo was Lamborghini's in-house reference for ease-of-use. But now we have the fire-and-forget Huracan. Having driven one after the other, and on the context of LA streets instead of the smooth and open landscape of Vallelunga or Laguna Seca, I now see the Aventador for what it truly is: the representation of the bull that's on the Lamborghini badge – head-down, horns-out anger. Like the Murcielago, the Aventador is big. It's more than ten inches longer than a Chevrolet Corvette, five inches wider than a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, and 3.5 inches wider than a Dodge Viper. It is also low, an inch lower than the already ground-floor Huracan. I won't pretend to be rational about it: the Aventador says everything I want a car to say. It's the certain, antidotal statement to brief and befuddled everyday lives. The cabin is a cockpit in every sense: close-fitted, button-filled, lit up. I'm five-foot-eleven, and I wear it like a tailored suit. I gave a ride to a guy who's six-foot-three and perhaps 260 pounds, so it can fit much larger frames but I still don't know how he got in or out through that scissor-door opening. The trunk in the Murcielago was big enough to hold a single dream.