”Wanna drive a Lamborghini?” the voice at the other end of the phone asked.
”Nah, we`re having too much fun with a Subaru Legacy station wagon. Maybe some other time,” we replied to Jack Gerken of the Italian automaker.
Before Gerken had time to realize a silly question had illicited an even sillier answer, we quickly shot back:
”Name the time, date and place,” sounding delirious over the opportunity to drive the Lamborghini Diablo, the world`s fastest production car.
”Fine,” he replied. ”Hope you enjoy your drive in the Lamborghini American.”
For the uninitiated, Lamborghini once thought that building exotic sports cars was fun, but producing military vehicles would be a nice break in the routine. So in 1987 someone came up with the idea for the Lamborghini LM002, a four-door, four-wheel-drive, 7,000-pound rival to the Jeep.
The vehicle didn`t make it onto the battlefield, but it did make it into selected driveways. After five years, it was decided to put the LM002 to rest and focus on cars, but not until coming up with 60 special editions of the last of the breed.
Those last 60 are called the LM American, but have been dubbed the Rambo Lambo. Seats are covered with leather, console tops with real wood, plastic ground effects skirts were attached to the rocker panels, the six carburetors were replaced by fuel injection and a gold charging bull logo was attached to the hood for these commemorative models that list at $158,000 each.
”A Rambo Lambo?” we asked Gerken.
”Yes,” he said. ”Oh, and when you`re done with it, would you like to drive a Diablo?”
Before Gerken could hang up the phone we were at Motor Tech in Barrington, which sells the Rambo Lambo and the Diablo.
We opted to first drive the 7,000-pound beast, one of only 12 left unsold.
The first thing that attracts the eye is the tires, one-of-a-kind Pirelli Scorpions made only for this vehicle. The tires are roughly 2 feet wide. Each one is bigger than a Yugo-and, at $2,600 per, more valuable. With a spare, the set runs about $13,000, or more than a Chevy Cavalier!
”How do you change a tire that`s 2-feet wide?” we asked Joe Cosentino, Lamborghini`s national technical manager.
”You grab your cellular phone and call for someone to do it,” he replied.
The Rambo Lambo is built on a 118.1-inch wheelbase and is 193 inches long. It stands 72.8 inches high, or roughly 5 inches shorter than Michael Jordan, and is 78.7 inches wide, or roughly 2 inches wider than the Cadillac Brougham, the biggest car on the market. By the way, the Rambo Lambo weighs 3,700 pounds more than a Brougham.
The vehicle is more than a bit novel. The rear seat bottoms lift up to reveal extra cargo holds; the tonneau top-covered rear cargo bed holds a stowage bin that when removed reveals two extra seats for passengers outside the main cabin; and the rear spare tire drops down to serve as a step into the rear cargo bed. With the step down, the Rambo Lambo looks like a PT boat.
Open the driver`s door and on the floor next to the seat is a red plastic lever. Turn it clockwise, lift and remove, and you`ve disabled the battery so no one can start the vehicle and steal it-though you`d have to wonder how many people would dare steal a 7,000-pound red Jeep with 2-foot-wide tires and expect to go unnoticed.
Though it has some dandy features and the sticker says $158,000, the Rambo Lambo is a bit crude. There are two cigarette lighters but no air bag, no antilock brakes, no glove box and no cupholders.
To say the driver is cramped is an understatement. With the massive chest-high console to your right, 4WD shift levers alongside the console and a bulging armrest on the door to your left, you feel as if you`re in a cocoon.
The Rambo Lambo is powered by a 420-horsepower V-12 teamed with a 5-speed manual that claims a 0- to 60-mile per hour time of about 10 seconds. Fuel economy? No one could say, but the gas tank holds 45 gallons, which should get you from one station to the next-providing the next is within sight of the first.
The V-12 is quick, providing you can handle the stiff clutch that requires more than the usual effort. We likened the clutch to sitting in a chair, extending the left leg and trying to push back a locomotive roaring toward you.
Surprisingly, once you master the clutch and the chest-high gear shift lever in the center console, the Rambo Lambo is fun to drive. Only problem is that the side mirrors are so small you have to look twice any time you move out of your own lane-and even then it`s difficult to change lanes because the vehicle attracts a crowd that pulls up close for a better look.
”Looks like a moose,” one motorist bellowed.
It looks like one of those trucks that appears every so often at the Rosemont Horizon, the ones the crowds cheer on as they run over and smash cars in their path.
Who buys one of these things?
”Mike Tyson has one,” Cosentino said.
”In storage?” we asked without getting a reply.
Having paid our dues with the Rambo Lambo, we turned to the Diablo, the successor to the Countach and the first product from Lamborghini since being acquired by Chrysler Corp. in 1987.
Diablo has been called many things, but never ugly and never slow. The car is a work of art. To appreciate an exotic Italian car, you have to separate engineering from styling. Italian cars may be mechanically finicky and spend as much time in the garage as they do on the street, but the designers are masters. Not a blemish.
Other than the dynamic looks, what makes Diablo is its claim as the world`s fastest production car. The 5.7-liter, 492-h.p., V-12 will take you from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in about 4 seconds, a bit faster if you leave the windows up.
The Diablo is priced at $240,000, which includes an $8,900 gas-guzzler tax because the V-12 gets only 9 miles per gallon in the city/13 m.p.g. on the highway.
Diablo is an improvement from the Countach in terms of visibility, Cosentino boasts, but such maneuvers as lane changing, mer ging and backing up from the parking space require extraordinary care in a vehicle that sits only 43 inches off the ground at its highest point.
There`s just enough room for two occupants. A tiny trunk up front allows you to squeeze in four pieces of specially designed luggage. There`s no room for a spare, so tires have special sensors that will turn on a dash light when you start to lose pressure as a warning to get to a garage. There`s a can of spare tire inflator in the mini trunk in case the garage is far away.
In surveying the Diablo before taking it for a spin, Cosentino started surveying this scribe.
”Are those triple E`s you`re wearing?” he asked.
Once we lifted the scissor door skyward, sat on the door sill and spun and fell into the seat, we realized the nature of his question. The accelerator, brake and gas pedals are within millimeters of one another.
A ballerina in toe shoes can reach and use each pedal, but a person with a wide foot stands to reach and use two to three of those pedals at once.
Initial admiration completed, it was time to head for the road.
Finding a place to play with the Diablo was a chore because just about every bit of pavement in the Chicago area is under repair. We did find some, but it had a 45 m.p.h. speed limit, and if you push Diablo, you can reach 115 m.p.h. in second gear.
But, we had a job to do. Suffice it to say that the engine purrs at 90 m.p.h., the suspension is amazingly steady at 120 m.p.h., but at 140 m.p.h. the windshield wipers started riding up the glass.
”Needs an adjustment,” Cosentino said.
Tapping the accelerator is akin to letting go of a slingshot. Diablo is a dart. It`s also europhia. The thump, thump you hear as you pull into the passing lane then hit the pedal is your heart pounding as the cars left behind are only a rainbow blur of colors.
A young man in a black Cadillac tried to catch up to the red bullet. He made a valiant effort to get within sight of our rear deck wing-until we figured, what the heck, we`d downshift to third and kick the pedal hard as if the pavement underneath was the runway at O`Hare. Within seconds the black Cadillac behind us looked like the period at the end of a sentence.
The cabin is cramped, even more so than the Rambo Lambo, but the adrenalin wards off pain. Back and forth up the road and down it again. In a Corvette, we`d have stopped long ago for motion sickness pills and to slide one more feather pillow onto the seat bottom to cushion the blows. The Diablo is perky, but smooth. The nose goes where you point it; the tires grab a tread full of asphalt and don`t let go.
Finally, the car wasn`t exhausted, but the supply of toll change was, so we called it a day.
Options are few but not cheap. That special luggage runs $4,500, the deck wing designed to hold the rear end down at speed runs $5,000 and a clock goes for $12,000. Yes, that`s $12,000. Something to do with 17th Century design and engineering.
Rambo can have his Lambo; we`ll take a Diablo any day. Only 66 will be shipped into the U.S. for 1992 versus 110 in 1991, a move that should help firm prices and profits.
Between this fall and next spring, Diablo will add a four-wheel-drive model called the 1993 VT. A convertible is in the longer-range plans, but a replacement for the Lamborghini Jalpa, code named the P140, has been put on indefinite hold.
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Jim Mateja`s column appears Sunday and Monday in the Tribune.
