Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni
Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni
Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni
The car is named after Lamborghini's former test driver, Valentino Balboni
What is it?
Officially, it’s a tribute to Lamborghini’s legendary, semi-retired test driver, Valentino Balboni. Unofficially, it heralds a series of new rear-drive Lamborghini models (it's the first non-4WD Lambo since the gut-wrenching Diablo SV a decade ago).
The Balboni has lost weight with the removal of the front diff, driveshaft and propshafts. It has also lost 10bhp, but it seems to gain so much more.
Strictly speaking, there will only be 250 of them, but they will herald a new era at Lamborghini where entry-level rear-drivers will sit alongside the traditional all-paw, all-weather supercars.
Balboni wanted a car with minimal electronic assistance, he wanted a nimble machine with an accurate front end and he wanted to be able to slide the car around at will.
So it’s still based on the same aluminium spaceframe chassis, it still has its suspension bolted directly to the chassis and it’s all still based around the 5.2-litre, direct-injection V10 powerplant.
While the car we tested ran the paddle-shift e-gear system to switch through its six gears, Balboni insisted that it should be available as a manual, and so it is.
What’s it like?
Well, that paintwork won’t be for everyone, even if Lambos have never been cars for the shy.
The interior is brighter and somehow more cheerful as well, with a combination of lighter colours and softer leathers.
But the engine note is the first thing you really notice. It sounds different at idle, with its new exhaust, and it’s not as rough or gruff as it seems in the LP560-4 and its idling NVH is considerably lower.
It’s smoother when you pick up the throttle, too, and seems to be a bit more free from the mid-range upwards (even though standard Gallardo engines hardly struggle to spin).
The only thing you notice other than that is that the steering talks more and it has a slightly tail-down stance compared with the stock car. Find some corners and you find out why this is and just how much it accentuates its differences over its all-wheel-drive siblings.
The first series of quick bends are revealing: the Balboni car instantly makes even Gallardos feel cumbersome and ponderous. They’re not, of course. They’re among the sharpest-handling machines around, but the LP550-2 is simply brilliant.
Its diff-less front end does an astonishingly good job of gathering every scrap of crucial, real-time info on what’s happening at the contact patch, then sending it up the steering column. It turns in to a corner much harder, initially, than the standard Gallardo and then lets you choose your stance on the way out.
There’s no more waiting until you’ve convinced the centre diff to send as much drive rearwards as possible. Now, all that power has no alternative, and that lets you adopt a wonderfully neutral, accurate cornering stance.
And, when the road suddenly changes direction, the LP550-2 becomes incandescent, delightfully flicking through the direction changes, biting hard at the front end to start things, easing its weight to the back, then firing out again.
It’s not that it’s faster point to point than the all-paw car, because it’s probably, almost certainly, not. But it feels like it is. There’s an unapologetic joy about it and you can’t help but being slapped in the face by how much lighter, more agile and more entertaining it feels.
For all that, though, it’s not a tail-happy drift king unless that’s what you provoke from it. The ESP intervention point may be higher than it is in the standard car, but it’s still there; it just lets go of the reins faster after it has done its job than in the stock car.
There’s a Sport mode, of course, which shifts faster and, ironically, more smoothly than in standard (or in the dead-ordinary Automatic mode), and the Corsa track mode is even more aggressive again. Still, it’s nowhere near a Ferrari 430 Scuderia in terms of shift times.
The only sensible place to even try to slide the tail is on the exits of second-gear bends, but the ESP software in Corsa mode keeps it in check very well and it always feels stable and safe even when it’s sliding.
The really odd thing is that it’s so much fun this way that you start to wonder whether the Gallardo was originally designed with this layout in mind or whether they’ve just done a superb conversion.
Should I buy one?
Oh, yes. By any means you can, yes.
If you've spent any time behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4, the notion of a more sporting version is pretty close to absurd. Of course, we're not Valentino Balboni, the man who's logged more miles behind the wheel of more Lamborghinis than any other human being in the history of Earth. While we'd be thrilled to one day break his record, we probably won't. Balboni has served as Lambo's test driver since 1967, and in 1973 began sitting behind the wheel of all the prototypes, including the Diablo, Murcielago and Gallardo. Few cars have left Sant'Agata without Balboni's stamp of approval, so when a new bull appears, "conceived in line with [Balboni's] own thinking," you can be assured it will be special. How special was up for debate -- until we watched the video of Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-2 Valentino Balboni in action. Not to give anything away, but wow. And while on some level we know it's just slick corporate propaganda, on another, Balboni really does seem honored by the fast car with his name on the left window.
The car is named after Lamborghini's former test driver, Valentino Balboni
What is it?
Officially, it’s a tribute to Lamborghini’s legendary, semi-retired test driver, Valentino Balboni. Unofficially, it heralds a series of new rear-drive Lamborghini models (it's the first non-4WD Lambo since the gut-wrenching Diablo SV a decade ago).
The Balboni has lost weight with the removal of the front diff, driveshaft and propshafts. It has also lost 10bhp, but it seems to gain so much more.
Strictly speaking, there will only be 250 of them, but they will herald a new era at Lamborghini where entry-level rear-drivers will sit alongside the traditional all-paw, all-weather supercars.
Balboni wanted a car with minimal electronic assistance, he wanted a nimble machine with an accurate front end and he wanted to be able to slide the car around at will.
So it’s still based on the same aluminium spaceframe chassis, it still has its suspension bolted directly to the chassis and it’s all still based around the 5.2-litre, direct-injection V10 powerplant.
While the car we tested ran the paddle-shift e-gear system to switch through its six gears, Balboni insisted that it should be available as a manual, and so it is.
What’s it like?
Well, that paintwork won’t be for everyone, even if Lambos have never been cars for the shy.
The interior is brighter and somehow more cheerful as well, with a combination of lighter colours and softer leathers.
But the engine note is the first thing you really notice. It sounds different at idle, with its new exhaust, and it’s not as rough or gruff as it seems in the LP560-4 and its idling NVH is considerably lower.
It’s smoother when you pick up the throttle, too, and seems to be a bit more free from the mid-range upwards (even though standard Gallardo engines hardly struggle to spin).
The only thing you notice other than that is that the steering talks more and it has a slightly tail-down stance compared with the stock car. Find some corners and you find out why this is and just how much it accentuates its differences over its all-wheel-drive siblings.
The first series of quick bends are revealing: the Balboni car instantly makes even Gallardos feel cumbersome and ponderous. They’re not, of course. They’re among the sharpest-handling machines around, but the LP550-2 is simply brilliant.
Its diff-less front end does an astonishingly good job of gathering every scrap of crucial, real-time info on what’s happening at the contact patch, then sending it up the steering column. It turns in to a corner much harder, initially, than the standard Gallardo and then lets you choose your stance on the way out.
There’s no more waiting until you’ve convinced the centre diff to send as much drive rearwards as possible. Now, all that power has no alternative, and that lets you adopt a wonderfully neutral, accurate cornering stance.
And, when the road suddenly changes direction, the LP550-2 becomes incandescent, delightfully flicking through the direction changes, biting hard at the front end to start things, easing its weight to the back, then firing out again.
It’s not that it’s faster point to point than the all-paw car, because it’s probably, almost certainly, not. But it feels like it is. There’s an unapologetic joy about it and you can’t help but being slapped in the face by how much lighter, more agile and more entertaining it feels.
For all that, though, it’s not a tail-happy drift king unless that’s what you provoke from it. The ESP intervention point may be higher than it is in the standard car, but it’s still there; it just lets go of the reins faster after it has done its job than in the stock car.
There’s a Sport mode, of course, which shifts faster and, ironically, more smoothly than in standard (or in the dead-ordinary Automatic mode), and the Corsa track mode is even more aggressive again. Still, it’s nowhere near a Ferrari 430 Scuderia in terms of shift times.
The only sensible place to even try to slide the tail is on the exits of second-gear bends, but the ESP software in Corsa mode keeps it in check very well and it always feels stable and safe even when it’s sliding.
The really odd thing is that it’s so much fun this way that you start to wonder whether the Gallardo was originally designed with this layout in mind or whether they’ve just done a superb conversion.
Should I buy one?
Oh, yes. By any means you can, yes.
If you've spent any time behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4, the notion of a more sporting version is pretty close to absurd. Of course, we're not Valentino Balboni, the man who's logged more miles behind the wheel of more Lamborghinis than any other human being in the history of Earth. While we'd be thrilled to one day break his record, we probably won't. Balboni has served as Lambo's test driver since 1967, and in 1973 began sitting behind the wheel of all the prototypes, including the Diablo, Murcielago and Gallardo. Few cars have left Sant'Agata without Balboni's stamp of approval, so when a new bull appears, "conceived in line with [Balboni's] own thinking," you can be assured it will be special. How special was up for debate -- until we watched the video of Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-2 Valentino Balboni in action. Not to give anything away, but wow. And while on some level we know it's just slick corporate propaganda, on another, Balboni really does seem honored by the fast car with his name on the left window.
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