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Lamborghini Urraco ownership is traumatic but awesome

Gene Ondrusek and his 1975 Lamborghini Urraco have a relationship forged in heartache. He bought the car on a whim in 1987 and had barely driven it when the timing belt snapped thanks to a bad previous engine rebuild. With the interior already a wreck, Ondrusek set off on a restoration that would take years to get the Lamborghini back together.
All of that time arm-deep in the car's mechanicals has turned Ondrusek into a pretty persnickety owner. Passengers have to remove their shoes before getting in, and he has a mat to protect the carpet on the driver's side. However, despite his fastidious temperament, this Urraco isn't a garage queen and gets driven often.
Ondrusek doesn't exactly make the Urraco sound like an unmitigated joy behind the wheel, either. The seating position forces the driver to sit at an angle, and with no power brakes or power steering, the wedge-shaped coupe is not exactly easy to handle at low speeds. Still, all that time fixing the car has clearly created a strong bond behind man and machine, and we think the wedgy, underappreciated mid-Seventies Marcello Gandini design has held up well. Get a feel for both the car and the owner's connection by watching this latest video from Petrolicious.

This is the fully uncovered Lamborghini Huracan Performante

We already knew that the Lamborghini Huracan Performante is absurdly quick at the Nurburgring, where the company claims it lapped the track faster than the Porsche 918 Spyder. Now Lamborghini has released specifications and photos of the car. It seems a little more power, active aerodynamics, and other fine tuning turned the Huracan into a track monster. Immediately apparent from the outside are the new aerodynamic devices and molded carbon fiber pieces. The latter include the hood over the engine, front and rear spoilers, the rear bumper, and the rear diffuser. Together, they help the Performante lose about 88 pounds compared to the standard Huracan. The front and rear spoilers also have fancy electrically-actuated flaps to adjust aerodynamics. At the front, a pair of flaps rest on the top side of the front spoiler, and at the back, two air channels can be opened or closed to change airflow at the rear wing, optimize downforce, or reduce drag. The rear flaps can also be opened and closed separately for the left and right. According to Lamborghini, they can be used to increase downforce on one side of the car to counteract the affects of load transfer in corners. For example, if the car was turning left, and the body began rolling to the right, the flaps could be set so that downforce increases on the left, keeping the car flatter in the corner. Lamborghini has also improved almost every other mechanical part of the car. The V10 now makes 640 horsepower and about 443 lb-ft of torque. The suspension has stiffer springs and anti-roll bars combined with either the standard, conventional shocks, or optional magnetorheological shocks. Power is sent to all four wheels, all four of which are forged and available in two different designs. They're shod in the buyers choice of Pirelli P Zero Corsas, or barely street-legal Trofeo Rs. Altogether, these changes allow the Performante to reach 62 mph in 2.9 seconds and hit a top speed of about 202 mph. Finally, this Huracan Performante is appropriately wild looking. The giant wing, massive exhaust tips, and Italian colors along the door all make this Lamborghini visually outlandish. The interior also receives exposed molded carbon fiber throughout to make sure its occupants never forget this is a fast, hardcore Lambo. It should also help justify the Performante's $274,390 pricetag, if the 'Ring time isn't enough. The first cars will arrive to customers this summer. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party.

Lamborghini: We did not cheat on Nurburgring record

"Why would we [cheat]? We have all the data, all the GPS data. It's verified. It's already verified." – Lamborghini CEO Stefano Domenicali Lamborghini is doubling-down on the legitimacy of the Huracan Performante's production-car record at the Nurburgring. The Italian supercar maker should have been on a high when it launched its Huracan Performante at the Geneva Motor Show, but it was instead forced to defend the 6:52.01 lap time on the Nurburgring's Nordschleife circuit in the wake of criticism. Skeptics suggested the footage had been sped up from a rate of 24 frames per second to 25, arguing the 'authentic' lap time would have been closer to 7:08. James Glickenhaus, the owner of ultra-low volume supercar maker Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, even called for the circuit to hold a special day to verify production car lap times. View 12 Photos "Why would we [cheat]?" Lamborghini CEO Stefano Domenicali asked incredulously. "We have all the data, all the GPS data. It's verified. It's already verified. "The simulation we did before we did the lap was already better than the previous time [set by Porsche's hybrid supercar, the 918 Spyder]. "What we saw was the great potential of active aerodynamics. The Nurburgring is a lot of partial throttle and long corners. The SV [Aventador] was for sure faster on the straight, but the lap [by the Performante] was all recorded." A Lamborghini spokesman suggested the entire controversy was rooted in "one blogger's business model [of] paying for clicks." Audi Sport development head, Stephan Reil, also weighed in during last week's Audi RS3 launch, insisting Lamborghini would have had no reason to cheat at anything and that its active aerodynamics would have more than made up for any power shortfalls. Audi is a sister brand of Lamborghini under the ownership of Volkswagen Group. "We also know that architecture well [the Huracan shares its architecture with Reil's R8]. We know what it's capable of," Reil said. "The Performante 'Ring time is absolutely credible. Active aero makes a huge difference. "We did a TT production racer for the 'Ring with about 380 horsepower and gave it maximum wing. It was so slow down the straight that everybody passed it, but the overall lap time was very, very fast. Much faster than without the aero downforce.