2003 Lamborghini Murciélago Tames a Raging Bull

From the July 2003 issue of Car and Driver.

On I-94 in front of Detroit Metro Airport, I tried to pass a Melvindale Elementary school bus. As I drew even, I noticed the bus had started to lean at a frightening angle in my direction, in fact, like a yellow Lusitania about to invert. I nailed the throttle to avoid being crushed. As I roared past, I could see the driver was half out of his seat, his body twisted to the left, his face contorted. He looked like Ralph Kramden yelling at Ed Norton. Here was his problem: Every child onboard had stampeded to the port-side windows.

That little dancing bull on the nose of a car—it drives people nuts.

The Murciélago has been in Lamborghini’s 16 United States dealerships since December 2001. Since then, 200 have been sold. When a dealer places an order, the car is air-freighted from Italy in a sealed container and can be disrupting American schoolchildren in as few as 10 days. There are two options only: pearlescent paint ($2500) and a nav system ($3500).

Lamborghinis are famous for being as fragile as spring ice, so it was of some concern that our test car showed 15,500 miles—as much mule as bull. “It’s survived 35 road tests,” asserted Lamborghini tech adviser Ken McCay, who is not Italian. “You’re the only guys who broke it [last summer, when a universal joint pulled free in the shift linkage].” We broke it this time, too, when the whole shift lever snapped off at the root. The car came with the license “AL 147 ,” a reference to “Automobili Lamborghini engineering project No. 147.” Maybe project No. 148 will be devoted to shift-linkage reinforcement.

What you notice first about the Murciélago is that its left-front wheel intrudes some eight inches into prime footwell territory, skewing your feet to the right. Your left foot searches for a place to relax—under the clutch is about the only comfortable spot. What you notice next is the accelerator pedal juts out of a small black box, like a paddle raised in a canoe. Your heel rests on the front of this box, and you bend your toes forward to move the throttle. You can duplicate the sensation by walking around with a box of Tic Tacs in your shoe.

Consequently, throttle roll-on, roll-off is a bit trickier than we’d prefer. Sometimes during upshifts, you’re still accidentally summoning revs when the shifter reaches neutral. An embarrassing overrev ensues. Sometimes during downshifts, you’re off the throttle prematurely. An embarrassing lurch ensues. All of which is a shame, because the 378-cubic-inch V-12 revs so freely, so enthusiastically, that you’ll swear there’s no flywheel attached. At idle, moreover, it’s so smooth and silent—relatively speaking—that you’re sometimes tricked into thinking it’s stalled.

On freeways, the Murciélago tracks confidently and is relatively immune to tramlining—surprising for a car riding on as much rubber as you’d find in a Nike store. You can steer with your left knee. At legal freeway speeds and in sixth gear, the V-12 is puttering along at 2000 rpm. Wind, tire, and exhaust noise are moderate, although the huge Pirellis (mounted on 13-inch-wide rear wheels) make expansion strips sound like individual rifle shots.

Visibility astern, through the 30-by-4.5-inch backlight, is actually okay, although it’s trifurcated by two Miura-like slats. The seats are as hard as park benches but offer terrific side bolsters that grip just below your armpits. The control relationships are generally good, the switchgear is intuitive, and the steering wheel is adjustable for reach and rake. The air conditioner even blows cold air. We do wish the cockpit weren’t quite so dour—a funny trait for a vehicle that is elsewhere as flamboyant as Las Vegas. Buyers may benefit by drinking heavily before selecting their leather hues.

Lamborghini’s gated six-speed shifter is still somewhat stubborn, at least by modem standards. As you depart one gear, it’s wise to pause a beat before selecting another. Clutchless shifting—as one might undertake in, say, a Nissan 350Z or Acura NSX—is close to impossible, no matter your skill at matching revs. Nevertheless, this remains the silkiest, lowest-effort shifter ever to emerge from the bull fitters in Sant’ Agata Bolognese. Even the detents for first and second are back where God (though perhaps not Ferruccio) intended, in the conventional H. Heck, you can even downshift into first at 20-or-so mph—a miracle.

The clutch is heavy but not oppressive. Step-off requires more clutch slipping than we’d like, although we’re not surprised. At 4058 pounds, the Murciélago is as portly as a Cadillac De Ville, and its viscous four­-wheel-drive bits and pieces are far from frictionless.

The brake pedal requires a concerted push. It’s sometimes easy to push right into the TRW anti-lock. You’ll know when this happens, because the ABS pounds and thumps like an out-of-round locomotive wheel. What’s more, the pads squeal when they’re cold. But forget all this carping, because the brakes otherwise function exactly as advertised, halting all motion from 70 mph in 155 feet—within 12 inches of what a FABCAR-Porsche racer can achieve.

What this Lamborghini does best—apart from fomenting small riots at every refueling stop—is accelerate. Few things in life so reliably induce giddiness as a couple of zero-to-80-mph blasts in a Murciélago, a process, by the way, that requires but a third of the available gears. Even with the traction control disengaged, there is no discernible wheelspin, in part because the contact patches comprise their own ZIP Code. The exhaust note isn’t a delicate Italianate wail, either. It’s a booming, thunderous muscle-car whoop that, at wide­-open whack, is 9 decibels more vociferous than the V-12 in Ferrari’s 575M.

For a blink or two after launch, the Murciélago’s progress feels almost leisurely. But as engine revs approach 4000, various valves and intake runners revise their overall business plans, and there’s a redoubling of thrust that will make you wonder if a secret turbo has kicked in. It caused my radar detector to fly off the dash and smack me in the bicep.

You’ll be saying hello to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, equaling what a Porsche 911 GT2 can muster and 0.1 second quicker than a Dodge Viper. The quarter-mile slips past in 12.6 seconds at 116 mph, same as a Ferrari 575M. One-hundred fifty mph is yours in 21.4 seconds—2.7 seconds sooner than a Corvette Z06. And throughout all this accelerative derring-do, the Murciélago tracked fuss-free and true. A pearlescent bull shot out of a cannon.

The steering is lighter than the ham-fisted Diablo’s—a huge relief around town—although there’s a small dead spot on-center and a slight increase in weight at about 60 degrees. The rack is adept at filtering out kickbacks, although some road textures get filtered out in the process.

Despite the four driver-selectable damper settings, we noticed only two ride flavors: stiff and stiffer. Bumpy corners can induce a kind of lateral skittishness common to suspensionless go-karts. Innocent sub­assemblies rattle and quiver in sympathy—the dash, the center console, even the side­view mirrors (which stick out 13 inches, like individual garden hoes). On the other hand, the Murciélago rides better than a Diablo and way better than a Viper.

On our handling loop, our test car proved a wholly nonthreatening bull. That’s because, like all four-wheel-drive Lamborghinis, it understeers. You’ll hear the front tires moan, then squeal, then howl. Dial up whatever intensity you want, but “push” is the order of the day, especially in hairpins. It doesn’t spoil the fun, though. How could it, with 0.98 g of grip on tap? That’s enough to disorient passengers and disgorge the contents of their purses. But it may contribute to what is certainly the Murciélago’s chief failing—that it tends to feel big, brutish, and awkward in all low-speed maneuvers, revealing a kind of gravitas you wouldn’t expect in a vehicle whose sole purpose is to entertain. The weird throttle, the slow shifter, the two tons of pork—it’s sometimes hard to establish a rhythm.

Far more gratifying are high-speed corners and sweepers, where the nose takes an earnest set and is disciplined about following whatever arc you’ve prescribed. Above 80 mph, this brute begins to feel like a big German sedan.

No one at C/D can afford a Murciélago, so we can’t tell you how such buyers think. But here’s how we think: For the price of this car, you could buy a Viper, a Mazda RX-8, a 911 Turbo, a Z06, and a George Foreman grill. Course, none of those devices has doors that open skyward. And none seems likely to tip a school bus.

Counterpoint

Lamborghini’s monster wedge is showing some figurative gray hair. The Countach and the Diablo were shrieking savages with heavy controls and claustrophobic cabins. The Murciélago is contrastingly comfortable with almost Honda Accord lightness to the lever, big and bland gauges, and visibility that is just a couple of wind-tunnel-blown pillars away from being decent. The Murciélago shrieks more quietly, delivers the kiloton blast of power more smoothly, and frets about the future with its hyperactive traction control. A Lamborghini has never been so easy to drive, or so middle-aged in its personality. —Aaron Robinson

I confess—I’m the one who twice broke the Murciélago. This record indicates a lack of mechanical sympathy, but I didn’t drive the Lambo any differently than the hundreds of other cars I’ve performance tested in the past eight years. In fact, during the second round of testing, I went especially easy while shifting, which increased the time it took for each shift. That’s why the 12.6-second quarter-mile time is longer than the 3.8-second zero-to-60 sprint suggests it should be. There’s no denying the Lambo’s shock value, and it rides better than you’d expect an exotic to, but I’d get more enjoyment from an everyday exotic such as the Porsche 911 Turbo. —Larry Webster

I always fancied myself a “Ferrari guy”—as distinct from being a “Lamborghini guy.” Something about the image of the cars I could only imagine myself driving—the Lambo is a bit, you know, garish. The Murciélago has not changed my mind on this matter, exactly. But man, oh man, what a wonderfully brutal, raucous thrill ride. When that free-revving V-12 is spinning at about 5000 rpm, roaring from deep within its throat, and there’s a shiver running through every part of the car, you can assign the driver whatever cheap showiness you’d like. What am I going to do? Bitch about the ride quality? The switchgear? It’s all worth it. —Dan Pund