Frankfurt IAA 2017 180 Lamborghini

The Lamborghini V12, dead?

Many people have speculated in the past few years that the V12 engine’s days are numbered. Ever more stringent emission regulations and crippling tax bills for high polluting vehicles have slowly sucked any viable future away from those manufactures who still wedged V12’s into their chassis’. However one company refuses to give in to the pressures and 2013 saw their most successful year to date; I am of course talking about Lamborghini. The Italian firm has recently released their figures from 2013, let’s take a look and celebrate how successful they were.

They produced an astounding 2,121 supercars, which equates to 8,484 driven wheels and 23,132 cylinders. An absolutely absurd 1.3 million brake horse power has been unleashed onto the world’s unsuspecting roads and all that from one small manufacture that, bar a few special editions, only has 2 models in its line-up.

Made in Sant’Agata Bolognese

Lamborghini shipped its products from the small town of Sant’Agata Bolognese where they are bolted together to ever increasing world markets. Financial crisis, what financial crisis? People in the USA were the biggest buyers, followed closely by those in China with the Middle East and Europe closely behind. Oh and don’t think those sales are just because the new Aventador Roadster created such a stir that everyone wanted one, the order books for that car are still full. Meaning that if you buy one today, a coupe or a convertible, you won’t be getting it for the next 12 months!

If that little nugget of Lambo trivia doesn’t prove how powerful the brand image is, then surely the fact that the Gallardo in its 10th and final year of production accounted for over half of those 2,121 sales does. Gallardo’s are now by far the most produced Lamborghini of all time, over 14,000 have been built. Although naturally a fair few of those have found their way into hedges, trees, armco’s and parked cars. Just check out WreakedExotics to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

The all new Huracan

As mentioned, the Gallardo bowed out in 2013, meaning the Lambo catalogue has a rather big hole in it currently. Thankfully though the obscene amount of money they obviously made from that car can fund what we can look forward too. Namely the Huracan, son of Gallardo.  Not to mention the potential for a controversial yet suitably mad SUV in a few years’ time.

The Lamborghini V12 Survives

So please raise a metaphorical glass for the mad Italians who refuse to give into world pressures. The V12 in the Aventador still has many, flame spitting, years ahead of it and the Huracan is sure to be awesome, I mean the name itself is just cool. The motoring world really is a better place for Lamborghini and their stubborn attitude against reducing cubic capacity.

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