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Road & Track goes inside Lamborghini's Sant'Agata engine factory

While it's fair to think that the Lamborghini factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese is a place where mustachioed Italian sorcerers weave spells into hypercars, the truth is sadly far less magical (although the results are just as impressive). Road & Track took a peek behind the curtain and toured the home of Lamborghini's engine works, where the 691-horsepower thumper from the Aventador is bolted together. Not only is it an interesting look inside the facility, R&T's host provides a great contrast with the current facility and its low-tech past.

Lamborghini Huracan Spyder tipped for Geneva debut

If you're enamored of the Lamborghini Huracan but have been waiting (and saving) for the convertible version, you may have to wait a little longer. According to Motor Trend, the drop-top Huracan won't make its debut before the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. That's almost eight months from now. The basic parameters of what the Huracan Spyder (as it's likely to be called) aren't hard to forecast. It will in all likelihood carry the same 5.2-liter V10 as the coupe, with the same output of 602 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque driving all four wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. Expect a slight performance penalty in return for the open-top experience as compared to the fixed-roof version, which is expected to boast a 0-62 time of 3.2 seconds and a 202-mile-per-hour top speed. Other powertrain configurations may follow, but the roadster is likely to pack that same configuration at launch. While the larger, more powerful Aventador is about to breed its fourth model variant in the form of the Superveloce Roadster, the Huracan has only been made available thus far in one version. Our sources at Lamborghini tell us that will change soon, however, with numerous variants to follow – just like they did with the prolific Gallardo that came before. And the Spyder could be the first of the many to follow. The bigger question is what kind of roof mechanism Lamborghini will go with for this latest open-top supercar. The Gallardo Spyder used a fabric roof mechanism (removable roof panels are featured on the Aventador Roadster), however the Huracan Spyder will have to contend with rivals like the McLaren 650S Spider and the new Ferrari 488 Spider – both of which incorporate folding hard tops. The latter was just released this week and is set to debut at the Frankfurt Auto Show this September, giving it a good half year before its rival from Bologna hits the scene. Related Video:

Lamborghini goes from carbon fiber to carbon neutral [w/video]

Draw up a list in your mind of automakers striving to "save the environment," and you might be forgiven for not ranking Lamborghini very high on impressions alone. After all, it only makes supercars with double-digit cylinder counts, displacing over 5.0 liters, and producing in excess of 600 horsepower. Hardly what you'd characterize as "green" modes of transportation, then. And though it recently showed a hybrid sports car concept, it has opted next to build an SUV instead. However the Raging Bull marque is out to rehabilitate its image by changing the reality of its carbon footprint. It's just not about to do so by watering down the supercars for which it is known. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." – Lamborghini CEO, Stephan Winkelmann This week the Italian automaker officially opened its new Trigeneration Plant – which is not, lest you think otherwise, an assembly facility spanning multiple eras of production. It's a new power plant, built on the site of the company's headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, that will generate its electricity, heating, and cooling, all from the same source of natural gas. The plant has an installed (potential) capacity of 1.2 megawatts, and will (practically speaking) be capable of generating over 25,000 MWh every year. That'd be enough to power all the houses in Sant'Agata, the otherwise sleepy town which Lamborghini shares with about 7,000 residents. The clean-burning facility is estimated to cut out 820 tons of CO2 every year, and by 2017 is slated to run on biofuel to raise that figure to a claimed 5,600 tons per year. The question is, who cares? Sure, people buying EVs and free-range chickens want to be assured that their buying habits fit their environmental conscience, but does the average Lamborghini buyer really care if their new supercar came from an environmentally friendly factory? "If we are going to do the things only because of the importance first thing for the customer, we would not be here anymore," Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann told us during roundtable discussion at the opening of the Trigeneration Plant. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." "It would be ridiculous if you would say we are going to save the world.