It’s safe to say that the current Paris Motor Show has been stolen by Lamborghini, with a car that the company’s top brass seem to be sending mixed messages with. Called the Asterion, it’s a concept with a hybrid power train and has been dubbed by its maker as “the first hyper cruiser”.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Lamborghini’s first production model, the 350GT – a sleek two-seater that was designed and built to basically tell Enzo Ferrari he could stick his own models where the sun don’t shine. And, while it caused nothing like the stir created by the unspeakably beautiful, trailblazing Miura when it was unveiled two years later, the 350GT immediately established Lamborghini as a force to be reckoned with. Well-built with a reliable V12 engine, it was a glamorous car for crossing continents in, rather than tearing up racetracks.
The 350GT became the 400GT (and gained two small rear seats), before evolving into the Islero and then the ungainly Jarama. Since that model was discontinued in 1976, Lamborghini hasn’t had what you could justifiably call a GT car in its range but industry specialists and armchair pundits alike are now wondering aloud whether it’s time for the company to go back to its roots, though management insists that it’s extremely unlikely.
Soon, if all goes to plan, Lamborghini will be producing the Urus – an SUV that will probably be able to shift its entire allocation in the Middle East alone, but surely there is room for a modern-day GT for the Sant’Agata outfit – one that doesn’t send you to the chiropractor after a day in its seat, one that you’d reach for the keys of when heading out on a transcontinent dash. That car could reasonably be a future Asterion.
The problem with the concept is not that it’s a more relaxed form of Lamborghini. What has everyone puzzled is the (extreme, naturally) hybrid technology underneath its gorgeous body. Mid-mounted is a V10, 610-horsepower petrol engine straight out of the Huracán, which is supplemented by three electric motors that add another 300hp. It can travel 50km on battery power alone and reach 125kph before the engine kicks in. Altogether the hybrid tech adds 250kg to the car’s weight and this, admits, the company, is about the limit of what it’s comfortable working with.
I have heard it myself from the chief executive of Lamborghini, Stephan Winkelmann, that hybrid tech is useless in the cars his company is famed for; that the current obsession with it at the upper echelons of the sports car industry is little more than pandering to environmental lobbyists to shut them up, and this is what has people puzzled. Has Lamborghini had to change its outlook? Stranger things have happened.
"We all know what we have to do," Winkelmann recently told Top Gear. "There is no way out – assuming the legislation doesn't change," before adding: "There are perception issues, like it or not, and when you are perceived as an outlaw, you no longer fit into the big picture. So we need to adjust, while remaining consistent to the brand."
So, will they or won’t they? Perhaps the strongest possible indication came from Lamborghini’s design boss, Filippo Perini, who said: “I don’t like creating concepts that aren’t ready for production. The Asterion proposes a real future Lamborghini, not a fake one. A meaningless concept is also a way of wasting money, and I hate wasting money. We are too small a team to be able to squander our time or effort.”
Indeed they are and, when I first met him back in 2007, Winkelmann told me there was no truth to the rumours about a third model line, yet soon we’ll have the Urus in our midst. Lamborghini, like any manufacturer, has to adjust with the times if it is to survive and perhaps today’s luxury-car buyer is ready for a new, softer kind of bull. Like many, I’d like to think that the Asterion will become more than just another concept that’s stored on the upper floor of Lamborghini’s factory museum. Time will tell.
khackett@thenational.ae
