Short Take Road Test
Nabbing a Lamborghini for testing involves trying to chisel into a press-car calendar thick with celebrity-studded red-carpet parties hosted by the likes of Donatella Versace. It isn't easy getting on the schedule. Lamborghini's silk-suited brand managers are hyping a fantasy lifestyle, and we in the grubby Fourth Estate have nothing to offer against a Donatella photo op except burned-up clutches and chunked tires.
So when our single day finally arrived to snap into the Fritos-shaped buckets of a 632-hp Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 roadster-a car with $52,710 in options-it was tempting to dismiss it as just a cartoon commentary on the excesses of the filthy famous. Tempting, that is, until we arrived at the test track.
Introduced last year as a face-lifted Murciélago, the LP640 smoked 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and went wild whooping through the quarter-mile in 11.8 seconds at 126 mph. It brought its 4100-pound girth to a halt from 70 mph in just 150 feet and pulled more than 1.00 g on the skidpad. Ferrari Enzos move only slightly quicker and sell for more than a million. The base $351,700 LP640 roadster has some engineering cred that true car people can appreciate, even if Donatella hasn't a clue.
As with the previous Murciélago, the LP640 roadster looks like an LP640 coupe that lost its roof panel to a passing tornado. Jagged edges and some unfinished lines are the result. The roadster's roof-toupee is a better description-is a flimsy canvas sheet with a few snap-in poles and fold-out ribs to hold its shape. Practiced hands take about five minutes to insert tabs A into slots B. A plaque warns against exceeding 100 mph with the roof on, something the roadster can accomplish in second gear. When not threatening to shear off, the roof stows-just barely-in the front cargo bin.
