Lamborghini Gallardo (2003 - To Date)
BY ANDY ENRIGHT
The Gallardo has been Lamborghinis biggest selling car by a massive margin and certainly their best used model. The input of Audi has revolutionised quality control. Post 2006 model year cars are by far the best with the e-gear models being particularly in demand.
The Gallardos shape works wonderfully well. Although it shares many styling cues with its bigger brother, the Murcielago, the Gallardo is surprisingly small and slightly more aggressive with its chopped-off angles. Luc Donkerwolke, the man responsible for penning both cars, has once again excelled himself. Obviously a Lamborghini, the Gallardos detailing does enough to distance it from the Murcielago.
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Only a very small amount of strengthening work was required, with some reinforcements added to the sills. Unlike the Murcielago Roadster, which has a fiendishly complicated ragtop, the erection of which would make a fitting Krypton Factor finale, the Gallardo shows significant progress with an electrically folding hood mechanism operated by a pair of buttons on the centre of the dashboard. Twenty seconds later, youre good to go, the roof either neatly cinched into place or secreted beneath the engine cover well out of harms way. The rear screen moves automatically while the hood is being raised or lowered and defaults to a raised position.
Unlike its great rival, the Ferrari F430 Spider, the Lamborghini actually looks pretty smart with the roof up, the angular styling giving it a far better resolved profile than the slightly awkward-looking Ferrari. If ultimate performance is your goal, look no further than the Gallardo Superleggera. Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tyres, optional four-point seat belts and carbon ceramic brakes signal its intent. The key change was excising just over 100kg from the cars dry weight which dropped to 1,330kg largely through extensive use of carbon fibre.
The biggest change to the styling, aside from the CF splitter and diffuser, was the fitment of 19-inch forged alloy wheels with titanium wheel nuts to shave an additional few grammes off. Theres also a Superleggera side decal.
Early Gallardos can be found from around £75,000 although youll need to add £2,500 for the e-gear sequential manual gearbox, should you so desire it. Youll still need £94,000 for a manual model year 06 car. Gallardo Spyders and Superleggeras are still trading for serious money and the canny buyers will wait a while until this market cools down.
The big ticket item to watch out for with a Gallardo is the clutch. Early cars came with a clutch plate made of a material not entirely dissimilar to Swiss cheese and there were reports of some cars with as little as 1,500 miles on the clock on their third clutch. Naturally, this would be dependent on the drivers skill or lack thereof, and in 2005 the clutch was upgraded to a beefier item. Residual values tend to take a sharp dip after two years due to the fact that the 24 month Lamborghini warranty was not originally extendable and many owners took this as an opportunity to offload and move on.
Look for scrapes to the front valance caused by car park ramps and also kerb damage to the alloy wheels. The interiors tend to be strong and the Audi-derived major mechanicals are also tough. Some have complained about paint resilience at the front of their cars and the Gallardo does seem very prone to stone chipping. Meticulous owners will apply 3M or similar protective films.
(approx based on a 2005 Gallardo coupe) Spares are predictably expensive. The Pirelli P-Zero tyres retail at around £180 a pair for the front boots and £280 for the rears (fitted and balanced), which means that a new set of rubber isnt going to leave much change from £1,000. Servicing comes every 7,500 miles and a normal server is around £1100 with bigger ones £2200. Lamborghini dealers have really got their act together in recent years and unlike in days of yore, wont sting you with hidden costs.
Against the clock, the latest Gallardo will register a sprint to 60mph in 3.8 seconds and keep going to 196mph. The four-wheel drive electronics arent quite as clever as those in a 911 Turbo when it comes to stepping cleanly off the line but get up to higher velocities and you wont begrudge that, the Gallardo behaving for the most part like a traditional rear driver. Only when youre really pushing it over scabby tarmac can you feel the front tyres biting for grip.
What impresses most is the body control. Drive the same section of road in a Porsche 911 or even a Ferrari F430 and there would be a lot more roll, squat and dive. The Lamborghini planes flat, almost sucked to the ground, its hefty 19-inch tyres and foursquare stance giving the driver almost unassailable confidence levels. The Superleggera takes things to another level.
The car is definitely louder than a standard Gallardo but the performance differences dont look much on paper: an identical top speed and torque figure, 0.2s knocked off the sprint to 100kmh (now 3.8s) and 10bhp added to the power output. On track, a different picture emerges with the Superleggera offering superior grip and body control, largely down to the tyre choice.
Snappy at the limit, it demands respect but is massively capable, on well-surfaced, dry tarmac at least. Needless to say, it delivers savage punch out of corners.
Before the advent of the Gallardo, the dream ticket was always an Italian supercar with German build quality. Now that such a thing exists, it seems strange that some see fit to complain about an erosion of Lamborghini brand values. The top brass at SantAgata hold the belief that the naysayers can complain all they like as the order books demonstrate this to be clearly a winning formula. Used Gallardos are generally sturdy.
Look for the uprated clutch and servicing done on the button with no corners cut and you shouldnt go far wrong.
