(5.6 out of 10)
REVIEW DATE: 20 Aug 2004
Lamborghini Restores Its Reputation For Automotive Fantasy With The Outrageous Murcielago Roadster. Introverts Form An Orderly Queue Someplace Else. By Andy Enright
'Maximum emotional impact.' That's what the Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster designer Luc Donckerwolke was aiming for and it's what Vespa riders feel when sprawled across the back of a Fiat Croma, camera phone residing in the gutter. If ever a car was designed to rip bystanders from their hum drum existence and have them feverishly trying to record its presence for megapixelled posterity, it's this outlandish Lambo.
I must admit to rather grave reservations about the Murcielago Roadster and most of them concerned with the car's image. During Lamborghini's troubled years of the Eighties, the decade that taste forgot saw a number of cars roll from the Sant'Agata plant that seemed more concerned with ensuring the ongoing profitability of Athena than offering a truly focused driving experience. Of late, Lamborghini has toned down the excess a little and has built some stylish, capable cars with the designs being just the right side of chestwig. I feel I may not be anything like hirsute enough, however, for the Murcielago Roadster.
This is a car that has oligarch new money written all over it; a conspicuous totem of discernably disposable income. Ferrari owners have long since given up making dismissively superior comments about the upstarts from down the road. Could the Murcielago Roadster be the car that restores the status quo? The omens are not good. The press demonstrator is finished in a colour scheme described by our driver as 'Sex Pest Yellow.' Lamborghini's own literature refers to it as Giallo Evros and it's hard to imagine a colour that'll swivel more heads. Streaking at a Royal Wedding would garner less attention than driving this car through the streets of Bologna. Drive it through Maranello, Ferrari's home town, and you're likely to be stoned.
"Streaking at a Royal Wedding would garner less attention than driving this car"
Despite its outrageous styling, the Murcielago Roadster has some reassuringly sensible engineering underpinning it. Body rigidity is virtually as good as the coupe thanks to some serious bracing across the top of the engine bay. Steel struts or, if you're feeling flush, carbon fibre, form a cage that prevents body flex. Naturally this adds a little to the weight of the car but it does mean that driving dynamics are well up to scratch. In certain respects it's better than the coupe, the brakes being upgraded with larger diameter and chunkier dual compound discs, beefier eight-piston front calipers and an even more powerful brake booster to reduce the amount of pedal effort required. Optional ceramic brakes are in the pipeline but when the steel discs can pull the car to a standstill from 125mph in less than 130 yards, it's not as if the current system is in any way lacking.
The big Lamborghini goes as well as it stops, getting to 60mph in 3.8 seconds. Top speed is rated at 200mph but that's rather academic as anything above 160mph will be mightily uncomfortable with the hood down. The hood. If the car has an Achilles heel this is it. Remember the ill-fitting toupee worn by the first generation Lotus Elise? The Murcielago Roadster's roof is even fiddlier, more complicated and takes longer to erect. When the 'R-top' is in place, if does free up an extra 30-litres of luggage space but top speed is limited to 100mph. One Plus point is that with the hood in place, the Murcielago Roadster looks a whole lot sleeker than its rather gawky predecessor, the Diablo Roadster.
Most customers will pay the £5,300 premium for the sequential manual 'e-gear' system which features a series of paddles and push buttons. It requires some finesse to drive an e-gear equipped car smoothly especially at crawling speeds when the clutch can be heard spasmodically catching and releasing. Hill starts turn into heart-in-mouth stuff and three point turns become a truly harrowing experience, as stRange smells from the clutch combine with the monster 12.55 metre turning circle. Out on the open road, e-gear makes a lot more sense, the perfectly positioned paddles and the super-aggressive Sport mode making it easy to forgive the system's urban recalcitrance.
One area where the Roadster holds all the aces compared to the Murcielago coupe is in sheer aural entertainment. The 6.2 litre V12 engine that sits right over your shoulder and generates 575bhp is a magnificent sounding thing at the best of times, a bellowing, thrashing amalgam that will have you searching for the nearest tunnel. The first time you hammer a Murcielago in anger will cause you to involuntarily flinch as the revs rise past 4,500rpm.
There's really no excuse for the Murcielago Roadster. It's over the top, showy and wildly impractical, but the world's a better place for its existence. Like its eventual owners, it's from a different planet to the one you or I inhabit.
The results below show the top MURCIELAGO deals on buyacar
| For MURCIELAGO ROADSTER | ||
| OVERALL | 5.6 OUT OF 10 | |
| Performance |  |
9 |
| Comfort |  |
6 |
| Handling | |
9 |
| Economy |  |
3 |
| Space / Versatility |  |
2 |
| Styling | |
9 |
| Equipment | |
6 |
| Build |  |
8 |
| Depreciation |  |
5 |
| Insurance |  |
1 |
| Value |  |
4 |
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