05/16/2007
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Sorry, ZZ Top, but despite those three letters clustered together in the name, superleggera does not translate to anything directly relating to a woman's stems. Indirectly, though, you could make the argument. In English, superleggera means “superlight.” What it means is that this newest Gallardo, like the Ferrari F430 Challenge Stradale, leans out a few pounds and packs on a (very) little bit more muscle, giving the car indeed a touch more leg to stretch.
Although European-spec Gallardo Superleggeras are lighter by the equivalent of a portly passenger (220 pounds), cars bound for the U.S. lose a trimmer sidekick and come in only 150 pounds lighter than more-pedestrian Gallardos. This is due to our side-impact standards, which mandate that Lamborghini leave the side airbags in the seats. We'll still get one-piece carbon-fiber sport seats, but with pinhead cushions packed and waiting in the wings. Europeans get four-point harnesses; we make do with plain old three-point belts.
The New Black: Carbon Fiber
Elsewhere in the interior, carbon fiber covers the center tunnel and
the door panels, and anything that was once leather is now Alcantara.
The interior door panels are sheets of carbon fiber with an Alcantara
pull strap for closing. Very utilitarian and purposeful, but we'd be
horrified if we were paying for it. Stitching color-matched to the
exterior adorns the seats and the dash, and the same color peeks through
a perforated strip of the headliner over each occupant's head. Unique
gauges look cool at first glance, but on closer inspection, they might
be off the clearance rack at Murray's. Their tiny, swollen text is
completely illegible, further compounding the problem we had driving
Euro-spec cars with km/h speedometers on American roads. Uncertain
of our speed, our default behavior was to assume we were going too
slowly, squish the now pedal, and zoom away. Actually, it worked out
just fine.
Carbon fiber is also used to shave weight outside. The underbody tray, the rear diffuser, the engine cover, the side skirts, and the side mirrors are all replaced with carbon-fiber copies. Polycarbonate takes the place of the glass in the rear window and engine cover. Revised intake and exhaust systems play on both sides of the power-to-weight equation, cutting weight and increasing power 10 horsepower, to 523. The new exhaust system gives the Gallardo a little extra snarl, but inside, the change is magnified by the hard door panels and the loss of 12 pounds of sound-deadening material. The result is an even more stirring aural enlightenment than in the regular car.
Ridin' the Little Bull
But what's it like to drive, man? It's a Lamborghini. It's exactly what everyone dreams it's like. It's fast, it's loud, it's tighter inside than an airplane bathroom and just about as difficult to see out of, but you'd ride in it all day and forgo sleep to do it all night if only the PR folks wouldn't demand the keys back and your driver's license weren't in greater and greater peril with each and every firing of those 10 cylinders just behind your head.
Lamborghini claims a 3.8-second 0-to-60-mph shuffle, and from our
drive, we don't doubt it. Stay on it long enough, and you'll end up
at the same 195 mph as the base Gallardo. Ten extra horses don't win
any additional aerodynamic battles at that speed. Lamborghini's paddle-shifted
e-gear, a $10,000 option on base cars, is standard equipment in the
Superleggera. A traditional six-speed manual is a no-cost option that
actually costs $700 because that model gets 1 mpg worse on the EPA's
city test, which in turn nets a higher gas-guzzler tax. Impractical
as it is, we love the look, feel, and sound of a gated shifter; e-gear,
on the other hand, seems to shift slowly even in sport mode, which
doesn't quicken the shifts so much as it adds violence to a slow shift.
Our drive of the car started at a resort in Paradise Valley,
Arizona, and made a beeline through metro traffic straight to Phoenix
International Raceway. On the way to the track, we suddenly found ourselves
entering a long tunnel with an open lane in front of us. We had to.
There was simply no fighting it. The sun was warm, the windows were
down, and children somewhere were laughing.
So we popped the left paddle a few times to drop the car into second. Under braking, e-gear will throw downshifts as recklessly as a rookie rev-matcher, zinging the tach above seven grand and perilously close to redline, but this time was not one of those extreme circumstances. With rev room left in second, we wound the car up and into third, and then just a little into fourth, the 8000-rpm hallelujah reverberating off the walls around us. Goosebumps rose on our arms, our own mortality seeming not to matter when life is lived this well. Drivers around us wept openly, calling estranged spouses and children to plead forgiveness. These things happen in a Lamborghini. Then we went to the track and things got really fun.
Ridin' the Little Bull in the Ring
Many moons ago, when some of us were young and others were merely
less old, a Car and Driver staffer deemed it appropriate to
demolish a Diablo prototype against a track wall in Italy. Lamborghini
doesn't just turn journalists loose on a track in its cars anymore.
In Phoenix, we and our fellow scribes were instructed to play follow
the leader with a Lamborghini test driver who had apparently been told
that about 70 to 80 percent was plenty fast enough for us hacks. So
we graciously took the back spot in a four-car conga line and dogged
it until the rest of the group was far ahead, and then we played catch-up.
Catching up goes quickly in the Gallardo Superleggera, and gaps we
thought we'd never close only took—at the most—about three-quarters
of a mile. The base car already generates exhilarating g-loads in all
directions; the last one we tested pulled a full 1.00 g on the skidpad
and screeched to a halt from 70 mph in just 158 feet, figures that
put it at the head of the pack in our "Lords
of Envy" comparison test. To preserve the Gallardo's drivability
and keep the car from riding too hard (something Ferrari would never
do with the Challenge Stradale, a strict track-oriented beast), Lamborghini
actually loosened up the suspension on the Superleggera. Even though
the Superleggera is lighter, Lambo claims it will pull the same 1.00
g as the base car and stop in only two fewer feet from 62 mph. Given
the weight difference and the strong feel of the brakes, we think that's
a conservative guess.
The brakes felt so strong, in fact, that they threatened
to pitch the car into a spin in a straight line when fully applied.
And thus, we found the Superleggera's greatest flaw. The balance of
the car seems to be upset slightly by the weight loss, like a voluptuous
woman who goes on a diet and ends up just skinny. In PIR's
longer corners, the car remained reassuringly neutral but was a little
twitchier and displayed a new readiness to wander into oversteer if
provoked. Then again, despite being as appalled as anyone at Tokyo
Drift, we would never say we don't enjoy a little smoky drama
in the corners.
Raise Your Hand If You Want One!
Everyone who wanted to get a little sideways in a 2007 Gallardo Superleggera has already spoken, and the full lot of '07s is already sold out at $220,300 apiece, a premium of $45,300 over the base Gallardo. If that seems too high, then you really don't want to buy a Superleggera in Thailand, where it will cost you 25,416,000 baht, or roughly $760,000 in U.S. skins. But Bangkok is so much fun.
Related Links:
Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera Video
Spied: Lamborghini Murcilago Superleggera
Tested: Heffner Twin Turbo Lamborghini Gallardo
Compared: Ferrari F430 Spider vs. Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder
All content courtesy of Car and Driver ®.