For the past 8 years, the Gallardo has been Lamborghini’s volume seller. With a starting price of around $181,000, it was Lamborghini’s “entry-level” car, if you could call it that. Earlier this year, Lamborghini announced the Gallardo would be replaced by a new model called the Huracan.
For half a century, Lamborghini has been making some of the wildest supercars on the road. But what if the entry level Gallardo is just a bit too pedestrian for your tastes? Well, the folks at Italian coachbuilder Zagato have got a solution for you!
It’s called the Zagato 5-95 and it features a custom body built atop the Gallardo chassis. Zagato has plans to produce just 5 of these cars; so far only 2 have been built. Imagine my surprise when I saw this car at Cars and Coffee in Scottsdale! One of only two in the world!
When PayPal co-founder Elon Musk launched a new company building mass-market electric cars, he was clever in picking the name Tesla Motors. Tesla was an 18th-century inventor and engineer who was obsessed with the properties electricity. He was a brilliant man who was under-appreciated in his own time, and using his name to sell electric-powered cars is a fitting tribute.
Taking a page from Elon Musk’s playbook, another upstart car company has adopted the moniker of a famous inventor. Meet the Motion supercar from Kepler Motors!
One of my favorite things about Barrett-Jackson is coming across all of the weird, limited-production, boutique cars that you just never see anywhere else. The Mosler Raptor GTR is a perfect example of this.
Started in the mid-1980s, Mosler Automotive has been the side project of hedge fund manager Warren Mosler. Unfortunately, the company seems to have dissolved in 2013. The Riviera Beach, Florida-based company made a variety of cars for the street and for the track, and one of these was the Raptor GTR.
The history of the automobile in America is filled with dreamers who saw an existing car or idea and thought to themselves “I can do better.” People such as Henry Kaiser, John DeLorean, Malcolm Bricklin, Henrik Fisker, and countless others held that dream for a short time, only to watch it slip through their fingers. Starting a car company is really, really hard to do – even for those who are blessed with talent, ideas, money, and a whole lot of luck.
Enter Jeff Lemke, an entrepreneur from Holly, Michigan (a small town about 50 miles outside of Detroit). Lemke has years of experience in building aftermarket parts for Dodge Vipers. In 2009, he decided he wanted to do his own car and started a company called Falcon Motorsports.
When it comes to Italian supercars, there is an unwritten social order of things. Ferrari is at the top, with decades of racing experience and some of the world’s best road-legal supercars money can buy. Lamborghini is a close second, having designed and built some of the wildest and most iconic vehicles in the world.
Both companies have been around for over 50 years. Both make very fast and very expensive cars. Both have proven that they’ve got what it takes when it comes to radical engineering and even more radical design. They’ve both got pedigree.
Then in 1992, this Lamborghini engineer by the name of Horacio Pagani decides to leave the company to do his own car. Continue reading
