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We visit the Lamborghini Museum at company HQ in Sant'Agata

Last week, Lamborghini invited us to stop by its Sant'Agata Bolognese headquarters to have a look around the factory and pick up a few technical tidbits about its new Huracán LP 610-4. It won't surprise you to learn this, but Lambo's foyer is pretty rad.
Rather than front its offices and factory with a gift shop and a reception desk, Lamborghini puts its amazing heritage on full display by offering up the corporate museum as a first impression to visitors. We had coffee in the morning and lunch after the press conference in this space, with stunning Italian concept cars and production models serving as an impressive backdrop to it all. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to share the Lamborghini collection with exotic-car crazed Autoblog readers (you know who you are), we did our best to capture everything we saw in the gallery here.
With some variation, the museum's two floors are separated by vintage: older models downstairs and newer up. When you walk through the front door, you're flanked by two of the coolest Lamborghinis in the marque's impressive history: a 350 GT to the left and a perfectly green Countach LP 400 on the right. Perhaps our favorite car in the whole joint, the Countach's Bertone body is still almost impossible to believe. Up close, we're reminded how design-driven this car is; the seats are so far inboard from the scissor doors that it's difficult to imagine that engineers ever agreed that the shape was a feasible one for production or actual driving.

Lamborghini's Aventador replacement will receive a new V12 engine

Lamborghini is about to close one of the longest and most significant chapters in its history. It announced the Aventador Ultimae unveiled in July 2021 is the last non-electrified, V12-powered street-legal model it will build. The car's successor, whose name hasn't been revealed yet, will inaugurate a gasoline-electric hybrid powertrain built around a new V12 engine. Company boss Stephan Winkelmann filled us in on some of the details. Sending off the non-electrified, V12-powered supercar is a big deal for Lamborghini, so a lot of time and resources went into increasing the engine's output for the grand finale. It develops 770 horsepower at 8,500 rpm and 531 pound-feet of torque at 6,750 rpm, figures that eclipse both the Aventador S and the Aventador SVJ. Winkelmann told Autoblog that 770 horses was "the best possible power output we could get" out of the 6.5-liter engine. It's the end of the road for this V12, because the Aventador's replacement will receive a new engine. Winkelmann said it's too early to reveal specific details, like its displacement, but he stressed it's not something we've seen before. And the hybrid system is notably not related to the technology that powered the limited-edition Sian. "The technology is different, it's a completely new engine, a completely new drivetrain, a new battery, everything is completely new. There's nothing out of the Sian or out of the Aventador [in the next flagship]," he said. Some things won't change. Winkelmann cited carbon fiber construction, four-wheel-drive, active aerodynamic technology, and a four-wheel steering system as attributes from the Aventador that are worth keeping. And, adding a turbo (or two, or three, or four) to the new V12 was never considered — forced induction adds weight and puts unnecessary stress on an engine. Besides, the V12 has "horsepower en masse." Natural aspiration is here to stay. Regulatory hurdles are part of what's driving Lamborghini towards electrification, so the Ultimae truly is the last of its kind. However, the non-electrified V12 could live on in some few-off models built for track use, like the Essenza SCV12. "For homologated cars, it's a no. For the others, we will see. It's not planned so far, but there could be an opportunity," Winkelmann replied when asked if future V12-powered race cars could eschew a hybrid system. This is it, then. Lamborghini will build 600 units of the Aventador Ultimae, a number split 350-250 between coupes and roadsters.

Volkswagen Group sales down 15% in pandemic year, but EV sales up 214%

FRANKFURT, Germany — German automaker Volkswagen said its global sales fell 15.2% during 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but showed significant recovery toward the end of the year. The company more than tripled its sales of battery-only vehicles. Global sales for all of Volkswagen's brands amounted to 9.3 million vehicles. The fourth quarter showed a smaller decline of 5.7% and within that quarter the month of December was still further improved, showing a shortfall of only 3.2% from the same period the year before. Volkswagen said Wednesday that sales fell the most in Western Europe, by 21.6%, while China, the company's largest single market, was down 9.1% Sales of battery-only cars jumped 214% to 231,600 from 73,700 across all the company's brands. The company's electric sales leaders included the Volkswagen ID.3 compact, with 56,500, the Audi E-Tron SUV with 47,300, and the high-end Porsche Taycan with 20,000. Volkswagen said that its sales fell by less than the overall market, meaning it had slightly expanded its market share. “The COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 an extremely challenging year,” said group sales chief Christian Dahlheim. “The Volkswagen Group performed well in this environment and strengthened its market position." Volkswagen Group's brands include Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, SEAT, and Skoda as sell as truck makers MAN and Scania.