Sant'Agata Edition · Origins
Every model, the versions that mattered, the races that made the name and the people behind them. Scroll through the years, filter what you care about and open any moment for the details and sources.
149 moments · 30 model generations · 110 years
A farmer’s son from the plains near Ferrara learns his trade on military vehicles, gets rich on tractors and burners, and starts to think his Ferraris could be better.
1916
The eldest son of farmers Antonio and Evelina is born under the sign of Taurus in a hamlet in the province of Ferrara. Tradition says he should take over the land, but he prefers the workshop to the fields.
1940
Called up in the Second World War, he ends up on the Italian garrison on Rhodes, keeping military vehicles of every kind running. The war gives him an education in repairing machines with very little to hand.
1946
After being held by the British when the island falls, he returns to Italy in 1946. Around Cento, small farmers need machinery, and surplus war vehicles are there for the taking.
1948
The tractor business that will make Ferruccio rich begins with discarded war materials, up against established names such as Fiat and Landini.
Ferruccio enters the road race in a Fiat Topolino he has modified himself. An accident ends his run.
Built around a surplus Morris engine, with a vaporiser of his own design, Ferruccio’s first tractor is shown to the public on the feast of San Biagio, patron saint of Cento. Orders follow at once.
1951
Three years after the Carioca, Ferruccio buys a 10,000-square-metre site at Cento that once held a racecourse and sets up his first proper production plant.
1958
Rich enough to collect fast cars, he travels to Maranello for a 250 GT. Clutch trouble, a brush-off from Enzo Ferrari and a repair with a tractor part form the best-known founding story in the business. How much of it is exact is unknown.
1959
After a trip to the United States, Ferruccio bets that prosperous Italians will want heated homes. He founds Lamborghini Bruciatori, which later moves into air conditioning.
1962
Ferruccio, a Taurus, visits the Seville ranch of bull breeder Don Eduardo Miura and is deeply impressed. The bull will become his emblem, and the breeder’s name will end up on the car that makes him famous.
By the end of 1962 he has decided to build a car and needs an engine. The commission goes to Giotto Bizzarrini, who had worked on the Ferrari 250 GTO, left Ferrari in the 1961 walkout and now runs his own firm, Società Autostar.
In under two years a tractor maker builds a plant, hires a very young team, shows a car that cannot run and puts a grand tourer into production. Then his engineers start something he did not ask for.
1963
The company’s own history dates the founding to 7 May 1963. Ferruccio, a Taurus with money from tractors and heating, now wants to take on the grand-touring makers directly.
Local typographer Paolo Rambaldi is asked for a logo. The idea comes from Ferruccio’s star sign and from how he liked to describe himself in dialect: “tamugno” as a bull, meaning tough and stubborn.
Giampaolo Dallara, ex Ferrari and Maserati, leads the engineering with recent graduate Paolo Stanzani. New Zealander Bob Wallace arrives as a “troubleshooter” and soon becomes chief test driver. This small team will create the Miura.
Ferruccio asks for a road engine and gets a high-revving unit with dry-sump lubrication. Bizzarrini will not tame it, the two fall out, and Dallara and Stanzani detune it. Its descendants power Lamborghinis until the Murciélago.
Ferruccio buys land at Sant’Agata, close to Italy’s car-making heartland, and builds a modern plant from the ground up. The work starts before it is finished, in a makeshift workshop.
At Turin the GTV’s bonnet stays shut. The engine would not fit under the sleek panels, so, according to the lore, ballast keeps the car at the right height. The prototype also lacks pedals, wipers and working brakes.
Styled by Franco Scaglione and built by Sargiotto, the first Lamborghini is shown to the press at Sant’Agata and then at the Turin show. Reactions are mixed: it attracts attention, but the public is not sold on the shape.
1964
Just five months after Turin, Carrozzeria Touring’s reworked car appears at Geneva. The shape is calmer, the headlights are fixed, and the aluminium body uses Touring’s Superleggera method. Orders are signed.
Chassis 104 becomes the first Lamborghini delivered to a customer, a few months after Geneva. Output builds slowly: only a small number of cars reach customers in 1964.
1965
Dallara, Stanzani and Wallace give up their own time to a prototype they call the P400: a road car with racing thinking, and everything Ferruccio has been saying he does not want. When he finds out, he lets them continue as a publicity exercise.
With no body at all, the drilled chassis with its transverse V12 behind the seat draws crowds and even orders. It is a layout visitors have seen only on racing cars. Bertone soon agrees to clothe it.
When Giorgetto Giugiaro leaves, Nuccio Bertone hires 27-year-old Marcello Gandini in his place. In the following years he will draw the Miura, Marzal, Espada, Urraco, Countach and Bravo.
At the 1965 Turin show the 350 GT appears as an open two-seater, the 350 GTS. Touring is already in trouble and Ferruccio wants a quiet all-weather car, so only two are made.
Ercole Spada draws a body for a shortened 350 GT chassis. Shown at the London show, the 3500 GTZ is built just twice. These two cars are the whole relationship between Lamborghini and Zagato, since Ferruccio prefers Bertone’s work.
The Miura changes what a fast road car looks like, while Ferruccio keeps asking for comfortable four-seaters and keeps refusing to go racing.
1966
The 350 GT can now be ordered with a bigger V12, at about four litres and 320 CV. Only around 23 of these two-seaters are built. This enlarged engine will carry Lamborghini for a decade.
To fit the V12 sideways behind the seats, the Miura joins engine and gearbox in a single casting. Early cars share their oil, and separate lubrication arrives only during SV production.
The 350 GT used a bought-in ZF gearbox because there had been no time to design one. From the 400 GT 2+2, an in-house transmission and differential designed by Dallara take over.
Touring turns a 400 GT into an angular shooting brake for Turin, led by Carlo Anderloni, son of the founder. Ferruccio does not take it up. The firm, in financial trouble, closes soon after.
Neri & Bonacini, the Modena shop that built the first chassis, make their own aluminium one-off on 400 GT mechanicals. It does not win approval as a successor and is sold to a private buyer.
Bertone’s body, by the young Marcello Gandini, is finished just in time. Ferruccio and Nuccio Bertone are both surprised by the number of orders. The press reaches for a new word, “supercar”. P stands for the rear position, 400 for four litres.
Shown at Geneva alongside the Miura, this is the car Ferruccio really wanted: two small rear seats, a slightly higher roof, double headlights and a steel body in place of aluminium. America becomes an important market.
1967
Bertone’s answer to Ferruccio’s wish for a four-seater has gullwing doors glazed to the sill, a hexagon theme everywhere and a two-litre six, in effect half a V12, mounted at the back. Ferruccio regards it as advertising, not a product.
Lamborghini’s body supplier goes under. The last 400 GT 2+2 bodies come from Carrozzeria Marazzi, founded by a former Touring man, and Marazzi will also assemble the next model.
Before the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix, Rainier and Princess Grace open the track in the silver one-off. It is a clever use of a car never meant for sale.
Unhappy with his V8 Riva, Ferruccio asks the boatbuilder for an Aquarama with a pair of his own V12s. Hull 278 is the first installation of Lamborghini engines in a boat and is delivered in 1968.
1968
The engineer behind the Miura’s chassis leaves in 1968. His former assistant Paolo Stanzani becomes technical director and carries on the development work, starting with the Islero’s replacement.
At Brussels Bertone shows a blue open Miura, reworked well beyond a removed roof, and with no top or side windows at all. Lamborghini and Bertone never agree on a run, so it stays unique and goes to a metals trade group in the United States.
At Turin, an Espada appears with Lancomatic hydropneumatic suspension as an option. Few customers choose it, and it proves unreliable. Later the Espada becomes the first Lamborghini to offer an automatic.
Gandini’s long, low car carries four adults at speed, with the V12 still in front and a glass panel in the tail. Named after the Spanish word for sword, it would stay in production for ten years and sell 1,217 examples.
Launched at Geneva, the 400 GT’s square-cut successor has hidden headlights and a shortened chassis. It is named after the Miura bull that killed the matador Manuel Rodríguez in 1947.
1969
An orange Miura sweeps through the Alpine opening of the film, with Rossano Brazzi at the wheel. Later research shows two cars were used: a healthy P400 for driving and an already wrecked one for the crash.
The S brings 370 CV, reshaped combustion chambers and a stiffer structure after complaints that early cars flexed in hard corners. Lamborghini sells 338 of them.
Ferruccio responds to criticism with Miura camshafts, more power, a new interior and better build quality. Buyers still stay away, and the model is dropped within about a year.
When the Beatles play on the Apple building roof in Savile Row, a red 400 GT with a black interior is parked below. Paul McCartney is a Lamborghini owner, and the car appears in the footage.
1970
Ferruccio will not race, but he lets Bob Wallace build a racing-style Miura on evenings and weekends. The Jota sheds weight with light alloy, gains wide wheels and big fuel tanks in the sills, and is used for testing and tyre development.
A compact 2+2 appears at Turin with a new 2.5-litre V8 mounted transversely behind the cabin. Ferruccio wants volume to stabilise the company and a rival for the Dino 246 and Porsche 911. Stanzani’s design shares nothing with earlier cars.
The second series brings a new dashboard, more power and optional power steering. It is built for just two years but becomes the best-selling Espada, at 575 cars.
The Urraco uses independent MacPherson struts at every corner, refined by Bob Wallace. Stanzani’s V8 has a single belt-driven camshaft per bank and Heron-type heads with the combustion chambers in the pistons.
Stanzani shortens an Espada chassis to replace the Islero, and Bertone adds half-covered headlights. Ferruccio means the name for the Spanish bull-breeding area, not the racetrack near Madrid of the same name.
The most radical Lamborghini yet appears just as the money runs out. Ferruccio sells up in two stages, the oil crisis hits, and the people who built the early cars begin to leave.
1971
Stanzani moves the V12 lengthwise behind the seats to solve the Miura’s noise and packaging issues, and Gandini wraps it in a sharp wedge. The show car’s five-litre engine gives it the name LP500.
Breaking with the bull names, the car takes a Piedmontese word of amazement. Gandini later said it began as a late-night joke: a tall worker in the Bertone workshop used the word all the time, and they tried it out on Bob Wallace.
Shown at the same Geneva as the LP500, the SV has wider rear arches for new Pirelli tyres, a stronger chassis, 385 CV and no “eyelashes” round the headlights. Only 150 are delivered.
1972
Needing money, Ferruccio sells 51% of the car company to Georges-Henri Rossetti, a wealthy Swiss friend who owns an Islero and an Espada. He keeps working at Sant’Agata; Rossetti rarely gets involved.
Lost export orders hit Lamborghini Trattori hard, and its workers cannot simply be laid off. Ferruccio sells his holding to rival tractor maker SAME and leaves the business that made his fortune.
The only new Lamborghini at the 1972 Geneva show brings 365 CV and a better interior. Ferruccio drives one for years, and in a 1991 interview he names the Jarama his favourite.
Money troubles lead the factory to sell Wallace’s one-off. Later, it crashes, and the fuel in its sill tanks burns the car beyond repair. Buyers then ask for copies, and the factory converts a few Miuras into SVJ-style cars.
After the 1970 debut, it takes about two more years to get the P250 into production. Early build quality disappoints and buyers have cancelled along the way, but about 520 P250s are eventually made.
Bertone revises the interior, power steering becomes standard, and a final six-year run of 456 cars begins. Late versions get black safety bumpers for the US market, which also appear on European cars.
From a bare shell, Wallace welds in stiffness, moves the V12 back for near 50/50 balance and strips the cabin. With about 380 CV, the Jarama Rally stays a one-off and is sold when things get worse at the factory.
1973
Sales of high-powered cars fall as fuel prices rise. The Urraco, meant to be Lamborghini’s volume model, reaches the market in a very difficult economic and social climate.
In 1973 the car reappears in red at Geneva and in green at Paris, showing what testing has taught. NACA ducts and air boxes now feed the engine, a four-litre V12 replaces the five, and a tubular frame replaces the first car’s structure.
Miura SV deliveries run to 1973, by which time Ferruccio believes customers have lost interest after seeing the Countach. The Countach LP400 is still months away.
1974
He sells his remaining 49% to René Leimer, a friend of Rossetti. Rossetti and Leimer take over management, and the man whose name is on the car no longer has any connection with it.
A yellow car at Geneva previews the final LP400, with a four-litre V12 and a body built at Sant’Agata. It takes three years to turn the concept into a car people can buy, and it will keep the struggling company alive.
Doors that lift upward are a complete novelty on a production car in 1974. They also make it easier to get in and out of such a low, wide shape, and they become a feature of future V12 Lamborghinis.
Ferruccio retires to private life on an estate by Lake Trasimeno, near Perugia. He goes back to the land he once turned down and makes wine.
At Turin the P200 appears with a two-litre V8 to avoid Italy’s heavy tax on bigger engines, and the P300 arrives with a three-litre twin-cam V8 and chain drive. The P300 is often regarded as the best Urraco but is never officially imported to the US.
Bertone shows a low Gandini study at Turin as a possible Urraco successor, with windows that seem to flow together and later Countach-style wheels. It is a real working car that covers about 40,000 test miles, but 1974 is no time for a new model.
1975
After twelve years at Lamborghini, the chief test driver and creator of the Jota returns home. His former apprentice Valentino Balboni, who had started at the factory as a mechanic, carries on the role.
Frenchman Paul Rilly enters a lightly modified Islero at Le Mans, seven years after the model’s launch. It crashes in qualifying with a best lap of 5:28. A place opens up late, but the team has already gone home, and it never starts.
The money runs out, the courts take over and BMW walks away. Two young brothers then revive Sant’Agata with a baby V8, sharper Countaches and a V12 off-roader.
1976
Bertone reworks the Urraco into a square-shouldered two-seater with a removable targa panel. It is the first regular-production open Lamborghini, but the company’s money troubles keep it very rare.
1977
Hoping to sell a military vehicle in the United States, Lamborghini shows the Chrysler V8-engined Cheetah at Geneva. Its American partner MTI had drawn it, and FMC says the design copies its XR311 prototype.
1978
Out of cash and unable to deliver either outside project, the company is declared bankrupt and passes under court-appointed control. Rossetti and Leimer’s attempt to save it through contract work has failed.
Lamborghini had agreed to build BMW’s new mid-engined M1, but the cash goes on the Cheetah and no production follows. BMW ends the arrangement, removing the work the company had counted on to survive.
The LP400 S keeps the 4.0-litre V12 but gains flared wheel arches over Pirelli’s new low-profile tyres, with a rear wing available as an option. This is the look that ends up on bedroom walls.
1980
Jean-Claude and Patrick Mimran, from a family food business, take charge of the company during receivership. Under court supervision they find investment, rebuild the factory and start to develop new models.
With Lamborghini in deep trouble, Bertone shows this roofless wedge at the Turin show using Silhouette V8 mechanicals. Drawn by Marc Deschamps, Gandini’s successor, its name refers to an Egyptian sun cult.
1981
Shown at Geneva, Giulio Alfieri’s evolution of the Silhouette gets a longer-stroke 3.5-litre V8 and softer lines. It is far easier to live with than a Countach and sells in the hundreds, a success by Sant’Agata’s standards then.
Having seen how much money the Cheetah had swallowed, the Mimrans press on. The LM001 appears at Geneva still with its engine behind the crew, then the LMA002 of the following year moves it to the front.
1982
The V12 grows to 4.8 litres. Peak power stays where it was, but torque rises, and the update finally lets the Countach be sold in the United States.
1985
A 5.2-litre V12 with new four-valve heads gives the Quattrovalvole 455 CV, or 420 CV in injected form. It is the strongest Countach yet, and that same engine would soon find a very different home in the LM002.
Work on a Countach successor begins under the internal code name Project 132, with bodywork by Marcello Gandini, the man behind the Miura and the Countach. It will reach the road five years later as the Diablo, though not with his lines intact.
1986
With the Countach’s V12 up front, Lamborghini’s long military detour becomes a luxury off-roader at the Brussels show. The press calls it the “Rambo Lambo”. Only 301 are built, but it foreshadows the Urus by three decades.
American money pays for the Diablo and a Formula 1 engine that gets as far as a Senna test. A recession then leaves Detroit looking for the exit.
1987
Horacio Pagani’s composites team builds the Evoluzione, a Countach with a composite structure in place of its steel frame. It is crash-tested to destruction. Management turns down his request for an autoclave, so he borrows the money and buys one himself.
Chrysler takes the marque racing, which Ferruccio had always refused. A new Modena division, Lamborghini Engineering, hires former Ferrari man Mauro Forghieri to design a 3.5-litre V12 separate from the road cars.
Lee Iacocca’s Chrysler pays the Mimrans about $25 million, more than eight times what they had put in, and adds a large cash injection. The plan: a halo brand and a rival for Ferrari’s smaller cars.
Chrysler shows a four-door Lamborghini-badged concept at Frankfurt, with scissor doors all round and a stretched Jalpa chassis. Sant’Agata’s staff are unimpressed, but its cab-forward shape feeds into later Chrysler sedans.
1988
The Diablo will not be ready for the company’s anniversary, so a last Countach is rushed out instead. Horacio Pagani restyles it heavily and adds carbon-fibre parts. It is the final form of the car.
The Genesis at the Turin show drops a Quattrovalvole V12 into a five-seat MPV with gullwing front doors, driving the rear wheels through a three-speed Chrysler automatic. Often called a Lamborghini, it was in fact a Bertone design study.
1989
Forghieri’s engine debuts in Gérard Larrousse’s Lola cars. Reliability is poor, yet Philippe Alliot takes fifth on the grid at Jerez and then sixth in the race for the engine’s first point.
1990
Production ends with 1,999 built, a tiny number for a car with so much cultural weight. Its wedge shape and scissor doors set the template for the supercars that followed, and Lamborghini’s V12 flagships have kept the doors.
The Countach’s replacement arrives after a long gestation. Gandini’s lines have been softened by Tom Gale’s Chrysler team, to the designer’s displeasure. With a 5.7-litre V12 and 325 km/h claimed, it is billed as the world’s fastest production car.
In the Japanese Grand Prix, Suzuki brings his Larrousse-Lamborghini home third, behind the two Benettons. It is the V12’s best result in Formula 1, and a first podium for a Japanese driver at home.
1991
Forghieri’s complete car is meant for a Mexican-backed team, GLAS, whose money vanishes. It races instead as the Modena Team. Nicola Larini’s seventh at the US Grand Prix, its first race, stays its best result, and failures to qualify follow.
1993
VT stands for viscous traction: a centre coupling, developed from the LM002’s system, can send part of the torque forward when the rear starts to slip. From 2001, four-wheel drive would define every V12 road-car flagship.
A lightened, rear-drive Diablo with more power celebrates the company’s anniversary as a limited special edition. A factory Jota kit later turns some of these cars into outright circuit machines.
Chrysler has McLaren build a white test car, the MP4/8B, around the V12. At Estoril, Ayrton Senna laps quicker than he or Mika Häkkinen had managed at the Grand Prix weekend. McLaren then signs Peugeot and the chance is gone.
A company registered in Bermuda and controlled from Indonesia buys the bull. The Diablo keeps evolving, while a smaller car only gets as far as a show stand.
1994
After sales collapse in the early-1990s recession, Chrysler sells for a reported $40 million. The buyer is MegaTech, registered in Bermuda, with Tommy Suharto, son of Indonesia’s president, behind it.
1995
Italdesign’s V10 prototype at Geneva is a proposal for the small Lamborghini that has been missing since the Jalpa. It never goes on sale, but under Audi its shape becomes the starting point for the Gallardo.
Geneva sees the rear-drive SV, a badge first worn by the Miura. In December comes the VT Roadster, with a carbon-fibre panel that stows above the engine lid. It gives the V12 range an open car from the factory.
1996
Lamborghini asks French firm SAT to build a GT1 racer from the Diablo. Around this time the stripped SV-R, raced in a one-make trophy, becomes the first car the factory officially enters in competition.
Stable ownership at last. A new flagship, a V10 that outsells everything before it, and a customer racing programme change the size of the company.
1998
During Ferdinand Piëch’s buying spree in the Volkswagen Group, Audi pays around $110 million after the Asian financial crisis shakes the previous owners. It brings capital and engineering, and an end to two decades of changing hands.
1999
The Diablo’s planned replacement, designed by Zagato, had got close to production. Audi’s chairman dislikes it for lacking the aggression of the Miura and Countach, a restyle does not save it, and development restarts.
2000
The Murciélago project is being rethought, so the Diablo gets one final update to fill the gap. The nose and tail are revised under Luc Donckerwolke, the V12 grows to 6.0 litres, and build quality takes a clear step up.
2001
The first all-new car of the Audi era is a 6.2-litre V12 with standard four-wheel drive, drawn by Luc Donckerwolke. Its name comes from a bull whose life was spared after a fierce fight at Córdoba in 1879.
2003
Audi wanted a second model line to support the V12 cars, and the compact V10 Gallardo, shown at Geneva, delivers it. Sales leap to around 2,000 cars a year against an average of about 250 before it.
Developed with Reiter Engineering and Audi Sport, the rear-drive racer appears at Frankfurt. Customers could order one for under €500,000. In 2004 it takes third on its debut at Valencia in the FIA GT Championship.
2005
Joining from outside the Volkswagen Group, Winkelmann runs Lamborghini for more than eleven years, through the Aventador and Huracán launches. He is widely credited with setting the company on its later path of growth.
2006
After working at Alfa Romeo and Audi, Perini becomes Lamborghini’s head of design, staying ten years. He brings a sharper, more angular language to the following generation of cars.
2007
Frankfurt sees 20 cars for sale with aircraft-inspired carbon-fibre bodywork over Murciélago LP 640 mechanicals. It is named after a bull that killed the Mexican matador Félix Guzmán in 1943. A 670 CV Roadster follows in 2009.
2008
A front-engined V10 sedan at the Paris show revives the idea of a Lamborghini saloon in the tradition of the Espada. Its name is the sword a matador uses for the final stroke, but no production version follows.
2009
Lamborghini launches its own European race series, with a lightened all-wheel-drive Gallardo LP 560-4 and a first calendar of six rounds alongside other international events. It remains the marque’s longest-running championship and reaches North America in 2013.
2010
The name, “sixth element”, refers to carbon’s atomic number. The Paris concept weighs just 999 kg including its V10 and all-wheel drive, a showcase for what the composites work has made possible.
After the 6.5-litre LP 640 and a 670 CV SuperVeloce, production stops at 4,099 cars, including racing versions. In nine years it has outsold the Diablo, which needed eleven years to reach about 2,900.
A carbon-fibre flagship, a run of wild few-offs and the Urus, which doubles the factory and rewrites the sales figures.
2011
At Geneva, the Murciélago’s successor arrives with a carbon-fibre chassis, a new 6.5-litre V12 and 700 CV. It goes on to outsell all of Lamborghini’s previous V12 models put together.
2012
Lamborghini shows an SUV concept at the Beijing show, then leaves it in limbo for years. Stephan Winkelmann eventually confirms it will go ahead, the first SUV since the LM002 ended in 1993.
2013
For its anniversary, Lamborghini builds three road-legal coupés from the Aventador at about three million euros each. Named after a bull that gored a matador to death in 1914, it follows up with nine Roadsters, revealed on an Italian aircraft carrier.
The last one, a red LP 570-4 Spyder Performante, closes a ten-year run. That makes the Gallardo the best-selling Lamborghini up to then.
2014
Named after a fighting bull as well as the Spanish word for hurricane, the new car uses a carbon-and-aluminium chassis, a 610 CV V10 and a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox in place of the old automated manual.
Lamborghini’s first plug-in hybrid concept, shown in Paris, pairs the Huracán’s V10 with electric motors for 910 CV and can run on electricity alone. The project is shelved, and the plug waits almost another decade.
2015
The new customer racer is later updated with two Evo packages. It stays on the grid for a decade until the Temerario GT3 replaces it.
2016
Ferrari’s former Formula 1 team boss replaces Winkelmann, who moves to Audi’s quattro GmbH. Domenicali leads the company through the launch of the Urus and the sales surge it brings.
One hundred years after the founder’s birth, Geneva sees a 770 CV V12 limited to 20 coupés and 20 roadsters. It also tests ideas for the future, including rear-wheel steering.
2017
The Sant’Agata site grows from 80,000 to 160,000 square metres with a new line and plans for a paint shop, taking annual capacity to about 7,000 cars, double the earlier output.
Revealed in Boston, this electric concept comes from a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rather than a production plan, it is a way of exploring ideas: motors at each wheel and research into energy storage.
Sant’Agata’s first turbocharged production car uses a twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 shared with the wider group, tuned to 650 CV. The name comes from an ancestor of modern cattle, and it reopens the path the LM002 had started.
2018
A lap of 6:44.97 beats the Porsche 911 GT2 RS by nearly three seconds and makes the SVJ the fastest production car around the Nordschleife at that time.
Grasser Racing’s Huracán GT3 wins GT Daytona at the Rolex 24, the marque’s first victory in a 24-hour race. A year later, the same team does it again with the new Evo.
2019
Deliveries jump from 3,815 cars in 2017 to 5,750 in 2018 and 8,205 in 2019, with nearly 5,000 of them Urus. The SUV reaches its 10,000th car only two years after going on sale, half the time the Huracán took.
Only 63 are built, all sold in advance. A supercapacitor rather than a battery feeds a small motor on the gearbox, adding 34 CV to the V12. “FKP 37” in the full name honours Ferdinand Piëch, born in 1937.
Every model gains a plug, the V10 and the pure V12 bow out, an endurance prototype comes and goes, and the electric plan is rewritten.
2020
Squadra Corse builds 40 of these, with over 830 CV from the most powerful naturally aspirated V12 the company has made, helped by a ram-air effect at speed. The race-car-like car is for circuits only.
Domenicali leaves to run Formula 1 from January 2021, and Winkelmann comes back to Sant’Agata while keeping his role at Bugatti. He takes over a company planning its electrified future.
2021
Winkelmann announces that by the end of 2024 every Lamborghini will be a plug-in hybrid. The roadmap, called Direzione Cor Tauri, sets the path followed by the Revuelto, the Urus SE and the Temerario.
Fifty years after the original show car, Mitja Borkert’s LPI 800-4 revives the shape on Sián hardware. Production is set at 112, and all of them sell within a week.
2022
Production closes at 11,465 cars with an Ultimae Roadster bound for Switzerland, the last purely naturally aspirated V12 Lamborghini. Fifteen more had to be rebuilt after the Felicity Ace ship sank with cars on board.
A raised, all-terrain supercar reaches production and is confirmed as Lamborghini’s last new pure-combustion model. It is one of the send-offs for the naturally aspirated V10.
2023
The Aventador’s successor is the marque’s first plug-in hybrid and its first series-production hybrid. A new 6.5-litre V12 works with three electric motors for about 1,000 CV. Early demand fills the order book for two years.
Unveiled at Goodwood, Lamborghini’s LMDh car uses a Ligier chassis and a purpose-built 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8. It aims for the top classes of the World Endurance Championship and IMSA, with Iron Lynx running the cars.
Presented at Monterey Car Week, this high-riding grand tourer has over one megawatt of peak power and points to a pure electric fourth model range, then planned for 2028.
2024
The car debuts at the Qatar 1812 km, but the single season ends with Lamborghini leaving the championship. A new rule requiring two Hypercars from each manufacturer no longer fits its plans.
The plug-in evolution of the Super SUV pairs the V8 with an electric motor, with enough battery for real electric-only driving. With it, only the Huracán’s replacement remains to complete the plug-in plan.
The Huracán’s replacement swaps the V10 for a twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 with three electric motors and 920 CV. It is the marque’s first turbocharged supercar and is named after a fighting bull of 1875. Every Lamborghini is now a hybrid.
2025
Lamborghini ends its factory GTP programme for 2026, saying the budget and technical demands had outgrown the plan. Resources move to the Temerario GT3 and the next Super Trofeo car. It calls this a pause and has not ruled out a return.
Lamborghini’s next customer racer is described as the first of its race cars designed, developed and built entirely at Sant’Agata. It replaces the Huracán GT3, with the Sebring 12 Hours planned as its first outing in 2026.
Lamborghini’s most powerful V12 yet, with three electric motors, is limited to 29 cars to mark two decades of Centro Stile. A Roadster follows in 2026.
2026
The first production EV is dropped from the plan and the car moves to plug-in hybrid power, as Lamborghini rewrites the fourth-model idea it showed in 2023.
The fifth Lamborghini to wear the Super Veloce name, after the Miura, Diablo, Murciélago and Aventador, gains about 50 bhp over the standard car from a bigger battery and its electric motors. First deliveries are planned for early 2027.
Lamborghini reports its highest deliveries ever, 60 cars up on 2024 and more than three times the 3,245 of 2015. The result comes with a line-up of hybrid models and despite tariffs and a difficult global market.
Production years of each road-car generation. Tap a bar to see its notable versions.
350 GT & 400 GT
Miura
Islero
Espada
Jarama
Urraco
Countach
Concepts
Silhouette & Jalpa
LM002
Diablo · Murciélago · Aventador · Revuelto
Gallardo · Huracán · Temerario
Urus
Few-off
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