2003 Lamborghini Murcielago Base Coupe 2-door 6.2l on 2040-cars

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Volkswagen decides to keep Lamborghini and Ducati, transfers Bentley to Audi

Investors in the market for a high-end Italian manufacturer that peddles performance will need to keep looking. Volkswagen announced it will hang on to Lamborghini and Ducati in the foreseeable future. Executives in Wolfsburg, Germany, are making far-reaching changes to the Volkswagen Group to reboot it with a big focus on technology. Credible rumors claimed that the people in charge of the carmaker wanted to carve out Lamborghini — which owns Ducati — and ultimately list it, or at least a chunk of it, on the stock market in order to fast-track the group's electrification strategy. Going electric is expensive, so selling Lamborghini would have helped fund the expansion, and high-octane supercars don't easily go hand-in-hand with zero-emissions cars. "Volkswagen needs to change from a collection of valuable brands and fascinating combustion-engine products that thrill customers with superb engineering to a digital company that reliably operates millions of mobility devices worldwide," summed up Herbert Diess, the group's boss, during a September 2020 meeting. His team ultimately decided not to fully divest both brands. It's too early to tell whether part of Lamborghini will be listed on the stock market, as some insiders have suggested, or if those plans are off the table, too. Changes are coming to Bentley as well. While it's not being spun off either, it will fall under the Audi umbrella starting on March 1, 2021. Volkswagen explained linking the two companies will "allow for synergies to be achieved as part of the electrification strategy of the two premium brands," a statement which suggests they will share a growing number of components during the 2020s. Unverified rumors claim that Bentley will notably get its own version of an ultra-luxurious electric SUV code-named Landjet that Audi is currently developing. We've reached out to Bentley for more details, and we'll update this story if we learn more. Bugatti's future wasn't mentioned in the release; unconfirmed reports suggest it will be traded for a stake in Croatian start-up Rimac. Volkswagen's supervisory board also reaffirmed its support for Diess, who was appointed CEO in 2018 and who has played a significant role in the company's transformation. Finally, the board approved the development of what a statement refers to a future leading electric vehicle sold by the Volkswagen brand that will be developed and manufactured in Wolfsburg.

Audi CEO says brand's EVs are almost as profitable as its other cars

After, oh, a hundred years or so of building vehicles primarily powered by internal combustion engines, automakers around the world have been and still are pumping billions of dollars into the development of electric vehicle technology. Everything from platforms and batteries to motors and the software to control it all requires untold hours of development, and that takes time and money. Fortunately, it's not going to take long for that massive investment to start paying off, at least according to Audi CEO Markus Duesmann, who told Reuters in an interview that "The point where we earn as much money with electric cars as with combustion engine cars is now, or ... next year, 2023. They are very even now, the prices." As a brand, Audi contributed more than a quarter of overall profit for the massive Volkswagen Group, which has such powerhouse brands as Volkswagen and Porsche among others. Under the Audi umbrella are Lamborghini, Bentley and Ducati, and it seems those high-end branches aren't going anywhere, at least for now. "These brands ... are very valuable very profitable brands, where we can even expand the synergy level in the future," Duesmann said in the interview. "There are no plans whatsoever to get rid of them." Despite the overall profitability of the brand, the ongoing global chip crisis is causing headaches. "We had a very strong first half in 2021. We do expect a much weaker second half," said Duesmann, who added, "We really have trouble." In fact, so serious is the trouble that the brand is forced into "a day-to-day troubleshooting process" to limit the chip-shortage damage. The good news for the automaker is that Audi has been able to boost its profit margin from 8% prior to the pandemic in 2019 to 10.7% in the first half of 2021. The bad news is that various chip shortages aren't expected to get a whole lot better over the rest of the year. Related video:

Lamborghini Urus makes North American debut, will arrive in September

After officially revealing the production version of the new Urus last month, Lamborghini pulled the sheets off the super-SUV on Monday night at a private event at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Detroit to give both North American media and customers of the brand their first look at the vehicle in the metal. It's the first time the Italian carmaker has had a presence in the Motor City during the Detroit Auto Show for quite some time, perhaps a sign of the importance placed on this model. The United States is Lamborghini's largest market, and the company expects nearly a third of its Urus production is destined to cross the Atlantic. If all goes to plan, the newly remodeled Sant' Agata Bolognese factory will have doubled its production output by this time next year. We will have a full eight months before we start to see how well Lamborghini can convince buyers to write checks, as the company tells us the first deliveries will start in September. With a starting price of $200,000, the Urus will have only a handful of competitors, namely the Bentley Bentayga and perhaps a very well-optioned Porsche Cayenne Turbo or Land Rover Range Rover SVAutobiography — though it now looks certain a Ferrari SUV is coming. Still, Lamborghini maintains that the Urus will be in a class of its own with its unrivaled horsepower-weight ratio and top speed of 189 mph. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2019 Lamborghini Urus: Detroit 2018 View 20 Photos Related Gallery Lamborghini LM002: Detroit 2018 View 9 Photos Image Credit: Live photos copyright 2018 Drew Phillips / Autoblog.com Design/Style Plants/Manufacturing Detroit Auto Show Lamborghini Crossover SUV Luxury Performance 2018 detroit auto show