Why the Centenario is a failure

Photo: Lamborghini

"Grr! Look at me! I want to devour your first-born!". That, I think, was the message that the designers of the Lamborghini Centenario were supposed to deliver when it was presented at the Geneva auto show last year. The result was this ugly duckling. Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; if someone finds this car attractive then that's his entitled opinion. Not like the optics are the reason why I think the Centenario is an insult - if not a grab in the toilet.

Under the sophisticated carbon-fibre skin hide the underpinnings of the Lamborghini Aventador, powered by the same 6.5 liter V12, modified to make the most power a Lamborghini has ever made. 770 horses let the 1520 kg (3350 lbs) super car transcend from 0 to 100 kph (60 mph) in 2.8 seconds at 8600 rpm. The Italians combined this with the most sophisticated aero since the Sesto Elemento.

The Centenario is a hyper-exclusive special model, similar to the Reventón from the Frankfurt auto show in 2007. Different to the Reventón, which apart from the bodywork was a Murciélago LP640-4, the Centenarios Aventador LP700-4 basis was heavily modified to reach the numbers mentioned above. Exactly like the Reventón, the Centenario is limited to 20 coups and 20 roadsters.

So on paper it's Sant'Agata's finest. What bugs me, however, aren't the numbers either. When Richard Hammond tested the Huracán for TopGear, he described the car as a master piece of engineering. As a sports car that can hold its candle to Ferrari and McLaren. A car that he respects, but loves? The Huracán is "probably a better car than any other Lamborghini. But the other Lamborghinis are better Lamborghinis".

In other words, Hammond missed the Lamborghininess. The car felt tame and precise when driven on the road and admitted its psychopath-ness only when you released it on a race track or a private airfield. He felt similar towards the Aventador. You wouldn't have the feeling that the car wanted to murder its driver as you would feel in the Miura, Countach, Diablo or even the Murciélago, despite this being the very essence of the brand.

The Centenario surely doesn't lack this serial killer mentality. I can imagine the car handles well on a track, with its hardcore aerodynamics and all, but 770 bhp in a car that light will catch inexperienced drivers off guard. No matter what technological processes are going on in it; as soon as you kill the traction control, this car will do just to its widow-maker looks.

Exactly this "kind" is wrong. Atleast for the Centenario. Because while I go along with Hammond that, in our understanding, Lamborghini has to build these cars, this wasn't always the case. This is important because what the Centenario is meant to celebrate, is what would be the 100th birthday of the brand's founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini, who's released his "better Ferrari" to the world.

We all probably know the story. Ferruccio, who, after the war, turned war machines into agricultural ones, was unsatisfied with his Ferrari. He went to see Enzo and gave him advice on how to improve the car. Enzo, however, felt insulted that some tractor builder wanted to tell him how to build sports cars, so he dumped him and Ferrucio went on to build his own sports car.

He hired the same engineers responsible for the Ferrari 250 GTO to build an engine of similar proportions as the 3 liter V12 found in the 250 - but without the race-engine charateristics. He wanted to balance fast driving with comfortability. When they delivered the 3.5 Liter V12 touring up to 9800 rpm, he refused to pay them until a court mandated him to do so.

With Dallara, he also hired a Ferrari (and Maserati) familiar for the chassis. After presenting the car without an engine at Turin, where the engine bay was filled with mortar bricks so the suspension didn't raise the car too much, he eventually had a home-modified version of the unsatisfactory engine built in, which now didn't produce 360 bhp anymore, but 280. The Lamborghini 350GT was born.

Photo: Ralf Roletschek / Wikimedia Commons

With the 350GT he built himself what he couldn't find at Ferrari; the ultimate Grand Tourer. This, norhing else, was what Ferruccio Lamborghini wanted to realize with his company. To build the Miura, which today is seen as the grandfather of the Hypercar and crazy Lambos, he had to be heavily persuaded by his empoyees, because such a vulgar car would be against his principles.

When they showed him different concepts for a Miura-successor, featuring revolutionary styling-elements such as the later brand-defining scissor-doors, Ferruccio blocked them all because they were too flashy. When he drove an early prototype of the LP500, which later, long after Ferruccio sold his shares of the company, would become the Countach, he had the engine be moved further away from the cabin because it made to much racket when driven.

Ferruccio Lamborghini stood against each and everything that Richard Hamond and the world want to see in Lamborghinis. We only got to see Countachs and Diablos long after Ferruccio retired. In no way am I suggesting that this switch of principles was the wrong way, because Ferruccio never wanted to build a world-brand and rather saw his mission to build the perfect Gran Turismo close to accomplished with the 350GT and 400GT.

Of course that mentality isn't suited to keep a company alive, despite it, and in general the entire history of the brand, being so distinguisedly Italian. Also no-one can say Diablo, Murciélago and co. don't have their charme; there's a reason they throned on bedroom-wall posters of little boys all around the world. As head of Lamborghini, I couldn't have made it better myself.

But this piece isn't about Lamborghini as a brand, or how a Lamborghini is supposed to be. This piece is about the Centenario and the Centenario is an hommage to a man who, with head and heart, supplied farmers with machinery and then Italians with jobs in his factory to make his vision of the ultimate sports car a reality, even if he had to roll up his sleeves and lend a hand.

If Ferrucio could see the Centenario... with its gigantic diffusor, aero-elements everywhere, its wing and that screaming V12, he would probably weep because his own company thinks this car would do him justice. Despite the target-audience being ridiculously rich car collectors and oil-sheiks, whom either let the car catch dust in garages or haul it through deserts in bad YouTube montages, I can't but express my strife for the Centenario.