If you ever want to understand why some people are willing to part with $246,000 for a Lamborghini, one day with a bright-yellow Gallardo Superleggera will make it all clear. People gawp and gape and wind down their windows to mouth the words "wow" and, in the case of spotty teenagers, "sick."
Strangers become emboldened to ring your doorbell on a Saturday afternoon and beg for a closer look. Others will tail you home at 11 p.m., like pesky magnets, in pursuit of a closer look at a car that is a common sight only at Lamborghini's plant in Sant'Agata Bolognese in northern Italy and possibly at South Beach in Florida.
The Superleggera is the hard-core version of Lambo's entry-level supercar, the Gallardo, trimmed of 126 pounds, thanks to the extensive use of Superman-hard but lightweight carbon fiber. The engine cover, the rear diffuser, the underbody cover, the exterior mirrors, the rear spoiler, the side sills, and the inner door panels are all made of carbon fiber, and some of the glass—the rear window, for one—has been replaced with lighter-weight polycarbonate. Removing 126 pounds from a supercar is a good thing, but bear in mind that the 3434-pound curb weight is hardly light, as declared by the Italian term superleggera ("super light").
While Lamborghini was shedding weight, it added 11 horsepower to the already enormous 512 horsepower that the Gallardo makes from its 5.0-liter V-10 engine. According to Lamborghini, the power increase came from changes to the engine software and a bigger intake manifold. Torque remains at 376 pound-feet, peaking at 4250 rpm. The six-speed e-gear automated manual transmission is a no-cost alternative to the six-speed manual.
Lamborghini has fitted the 19-inch wheels with sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsa rubber that is optional on the base Gallardo. The suspension settings are carried over, according to Lamborghini. Carbon-ceramic brakes are an option on the Superleggera and were fitted to our test car for a whopping $15,600. (Porsche charges about $8800 for this type of brake, and Ferrari wants somewhere around $22,000 for carbon rotors on the F430.)
In addition to all the carbon-fiber pieces inside and out, the Superleggera gets a number of interior changes, including Alcantara, a synthetic suede, in place of leather on the dashboard. European versions get special lightweight bucket seats, but the U.S.-bound cars have the Gallardo's optional sport seats, which weigh 66 more pounds than the buckets because they have built-in side airbags.
The car certainly looks fantastic. The Gallardo may be four years old, but its shape still turns heads almost off their necks. Especially in bright Midas Yellow. Inside, the dark-gray Alcantara is relieved by yellow stitching and motifs that would look gauche in a Corvette but somehow work in a Lambo.
The carbon-fiber inserts and inner door panels look terrific, but the numbers on the dials are tricky to read. Unlike Lambos of yore, in which electrical items and the air conditioner had the faithfulness of Wilt Chamberlain, the audio, HVAC, and navigation systems in this car work perfectly. Put that down to corporate overlord Audi's influence. The squared-off steering wheel has a cheesy plastic piece screwed onto its base, but we didn't hear any complaints about the driving position or the visibility from inside this mid-engined car.
There certainly weren't any negative comments about the Superleggera's engine. It sounds sensational, the noise building from a rambunctious bellow low down in the rev range to a guttural bark as the tach needle climbs toward the 8000-rpm redline. Like a Ferrari F430, you consciously head for bridges and tunnels with the windows down, just to hear the exhaust note reverb. Flick the left-hand paddle shifter at high revs, and there's an instant blip of soaring engine revs to enhance the effect.
The engine is pretty flexible, with plenty of thrust from 3000 rpm up. There's lots of urge in a straight line, too. We recorded a 0-to-60 time of 3.5 seconds, 0.6 second better than the first Gallardo we tested [February 2004], with 0 to 100 mph coming in 7.9 seconds (versus 9.2) and the quarter-mile taking 11.7 seconds at 123 mph (versus 12.4 at 118). Those numbers are right up there with the best we have seen for cars such as the Porsche 911 Turbo, the Corvette Z06, and the latest Dodge Viper. As tester Dave VanderWerp commented in his deadpan Midwestern manner, "Quite strong, I'd say."
The e-gear transmission has its good and bad points. In automatic mode, the shifts are clunky and never quite happen when you expect them to. If you resort to manual mode, effected by a pair of elegant, fixed paddles on either side of the steering column, it works much better. If smoothness is a goal, avoid sport mode, where shifts are very fast—about 0.2 second each—and brutal enough to jerk your neck back and forth. For drivers desperate to impress bystanders, we recommend a launch-control start. Since the Gallardo was introduced, this procedure has been revised. Now the driver simply puts the car into gear, switches off the stability control, engages the sport mode, releases any pressure on either pedal, and then stomps on the gas. The engine revs to about 5000 rpm, the clutch is dumped, all four wheels spin, and the car departs like a cat on a lighted range.
With its soft and sticky Pirellis, we expected better than 0.97 g on the skidpad, especially since that '04 Gallardo had managed 1.00 g. This may have been because of some overly exuberant lapping at GingerMan Raceway the evening before the car was tested, leaving the P Zero Corsas in less than pristine condition. The Superleggera certainly performed well enough on the track, recording lap times comparable with those of a Z06.
With its stiffened suspension and improved power-to-weight ratio over the Gallardo, the Superleggera feels like a more finely honed weapon at max attack. The steering is nicely weighted and has plenty of feel (if not as much communication as a Porsche GT3's or Ferrari F430's), and the handling is reasonably idiot-proof. There's initial understeer that mutates into neutrality with the application of power. The car drifts nicely, but you have to provoke it mightily to get the tail sliding with the stability system switched off. On the street, it just cleaves its way through corners. The ride is firm but relatively supple, although expansion joints and potholes crash through the body structure with jack-hammer ferocity.
So far, so good. The only problem with the Superleggera came in stopping it. The car manages the 70-mph-to-standstill braking test in a stellar 150 feet, and the anchors work fine on the track. But the brake-pedal feel, at anything other than full retardation, is awful. We can't recall anything with brakes this sensitive, a trait that isn't helped by the clutch seemingly grabbing on downshifts. Virtually all our drivers embarrassingly lurched to a halt at a stoplight, no doubt encouraging other drivers to think uncharitably about their driving prowess. Fuel consumption wasn't exactly a strong point, either, with an overall figure of 12 mpg in our hands.
The Superleggera is a sensational car, but it's also hugely expensive at a base price of $224,800, a premium of nearly $30,000 over the base Gallardo. Our test car, optioned with carbon-ceramic brakes, a leather steering wheel ($650), an anti-theft system ($665), floor mats ($650), a navigation system ($3250), and the Travel package ($360), ran to a cool $245,975. It sounds like a lot of extra money over a Gallardo, but a Superleggera is a good $100,000 less than a comparably equippedMurcielago LP640, about as quick in a straight line, and a lot less of a handful on a track. If you look at it that way, it's something of a bargain for Lambo fanciers.
ORIGINS OF A NAME
The literal translation for superleggera is "super light." The term was most widely used by Touring of Milan, an Italian body designer and builder, although its intention was to describe a form of light and rigid body construction where aluminum panels were wrapped around a framework of small-diameter steel tubes. Among the cars fitted with superleggera bodywork were the Aston Martin DB4 and DB5 and the Ferrari 166MM Barchetta.
