2013 Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2

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Car and Driver’s European correspondent, Jethro Bovingdon, brings us what he calls the last of the old school supercars. He’s talking about Lamborghini’s “base model” Gallardo with a true manual transmission and two-wheel drive. Lamborghini first made a two-wheel drive Gallardo to celebrate the retirement of their chief test driver, Valentino Balboni. It seems that car was popular enough to warrant them making it a regular part of the lineup. Even though the Balboni car was rear wheel drive, the suspension was set up very conservative to provide the stability of natural understeer. It seems that problem has been remedied for the LP550-2. Jethro says there is a slight touch of understeer that’s very easy to overcome to put the car into a drift which he demonstrates several times. The other “less is more” feature of the car is the open-gate manual transmission which turns out to be the last of its kind in the age of the modern supercar. It’s a shame that most of the people buying these cars prefer the short shift times to the experience and mastery of shifting your own gears with a clutch. Hopefully they will make a retro novelty comeback sometime in the future.


Source: Car and Driver on YouTube

2012 Pikes Peak Helicopter Highlights

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The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb organization released this compilation of highlights from this year’s event. 2012 was exciting since the road surface was fully paved for the first time resulting in many broken records. There was also a very strong showing in the electric vehicle class from Monster Tajima, Toyota, Yokohama and EV West. Hit our “Pikes Peak” tag to see all of our coverage.


Source: Pikes Peak Hill Climb on YouTube via Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Facebook

The Man Who Designs Moto Guzzis

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DRIVE channel’s Ride Apart segment featured this fascinating interview of the Vice President of Design for the Piaggio Group, Miguel Galluzzi. He is responsible for the design of the Ducati Monster and the Moto Guzzi V7 among other bikes. Hailing from Argentina, Galluzzi and his brother got their first motorcycle from their uncle as a birthday present instead of the drum set they were hoping for. From there they both started racing motocross before Galluzzi moved to Florida to study Mechanical Engineering. Once in Florida, Miguel transferred to the Art Center to study design. His work has been very influential in the world of Cafe Racers and naked bikes because he keeps things “simple and strong.” Watch the video to hear about the rest of his philosophy and what it means for a design to have soul.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube

Building an AMG Engine

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Motor Trend’s Johnny Lieberman gets an opportunity to tour AMG’s engine factory in Affalterbach, Germany and we get the pleasure of tagging along. He works with one of the AMG technicians to build one of the 5.5 liter twin turbo V8’s that powers the entire AMG line with the exception of the C63 AMG (the engineers thought the C63 was too light for the turbo engine’s torque so they stayed with the 6.2 liter naturally aspirated V8). The part that I found particularly interesting was the assembly and testing of the 2,000 psi direct injection fuel system. After everything is installed, they pressure test it for leaks with helium since it’s the smallest practical atom (hydrogen is smaller but more ridiculous to work with). The last thing they want is a bunch of high pressure fuel spraying all over the engine. This was a special opportunity for the Johnny unlike GM’s program where anybody can pay to assemble their own LS7 or LS9 for their Corvette or crate engine purposes. AMG actually decided not to put the engine Lieberman worked on into use. Right now it’s on a display stand where it can’t hurt anybody.


Source: Motor Trend on YouTube