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Lamborghini Jumpacan built to race The Mint 400 hits the dirt

Lamborghini's cars keep finding their way off the boulevards and into the barrens. Officially, Lamborghini whipped out the rally-happy Huracan Sterrato concept in 2019, preceded by the Gallardo Parcour concept in 2013. Unofficially, an unnamed builder sold their off-road Gallardo complete with light bars and rear-mounted spare in 2019, the same year Alex Choi showed off his Huracan V3 Unicorn with an external roll cage, and in 2017 some audacious owner got his Lamborghini Jarama bouncing through stages of the DWA Coastal Range Rally in California. Let us now add the Lamborghini Jumpacan to the roster. Fabbed up by the YouTubers at B is for Build, the Jumpacan's been in the works for 18 months with the intention to race it at The Mint 400 this December. The man behind B is for Build, Chris Steinbacher, recently got the Jumpacan out to the desert plains for its first test over 40 miles per hour.  The mashup started as a Huracan that had been mangled in a big accident. The Build team 3D-scanned the chassis and got it straight, then performed a similar surgery to one they'd carried out on their SEMA Huracan in 2019: They put an LS V8 in back and paired it with a Graziano six-speed manual, leaving off the 1,500-horsepower SEMA car's two turbos. The Jumpacan's been fitted with a long-travel suspension designed by SEM Dirt, the 35-inch tires hung up front and 37-inchers in the back contributing to the 12 inches of ground clearance. Other bits include Holley electronics managing the engine, a radiator mounted just behind the cockpit and fed by a roof scoop, Ford Shelby GT500 brakes tucked into Rotiform wheels, a roll cage and racing fuel cell, and the obligatory torso-hugging racing seats. The Jumpacan conversion has stretched the Huracan's width from 76.1 inches stock to 102 inches.  True, it's barely a Lamborghini anymore. But it might be the coolest thing that was once a Lamborghini to ever line up at The Mint. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

World's largest Lamborghini dealer is in Dubai, because of course it is

Dubai is a place where supercars are so common, even the police drive them. So it's not at all surprising that Lamborghini would open its largest dealership ever in the city. The dealer is three stories tall and has over 19,000 square feet. That's a lot of space for cars, and according to Lamborghini's CEO, Stefano Domenicali, that space is needed, and perhaps other dealers will need to expand. In the release announcing the dealership's opening, he says Lamborghini expects its overall sales to double when the Urus launches this year. This will require more sales and service space. The Dubai Lamborghini dealer isn't just sales and service, though. In the photos above, you can clearly see that a large portion of real estate is dedicated to selling merchandise. Among the trinkets on sale are shirts, hats, keychains, mugs, and model cars. So regardless of your net worth, this dealer has something for you. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

The mood at this year’s Paris Motor Show: Quiet

The Paris Motor Show, held every other year in the early fall, typically kicks off the annual cavalcade of automotive conclaves, one that traverses the globe between autumn and spring, introducing projective, conceptual and production-ready vehicle models to the international automotive press, automotive aficionados and a public hungry for news of our increasingly futuristic mobility enterprise. But this year, at the press preview days for the show, the grounds of the Porte de Versailles convention center felt a bit more sparsely populated than usual. This was not simply a subjective sensation, or one influenced by the center's atypically dispersed assemblage of seven discrete buildings, which tends to spread out the cars and the crowds. There were not only fewer new vehicles being premiered in Paris this year, there were fewer manufacturers there to display them. Major mainstream European OEM stalwarts such as Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Nissan and Volkswagen chose to sit out Paris this year, as did boutique manufacturers like Bentley, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. This is not simply based in some antipathy on the part of the German, British and Italian manufacturers toward the French market — though for a variety of historical and societal reasons that market may be more dominated by vehicles produced domestically than others. Rather, it is part of a larger trend in the industry. Last year, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would not be participating in the flagship North American International Auto Show in 2019 — and that it might not return. Other brands including Jaguar/Land Rover, Audi, Porsche, Mazda and nearly every exotic carmaker have also departed the Detroit show. Some of these brands will still appear in the city in which the show is taking place, and host an event offsite, to capitalize on the presence of a large number of reporters in attendance. And even brands that do have a presence at the show have shifted their vehicle introductions to the days before the official press opening in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. In many ways, this makes sense. With an expanding number of automakers, with diversification and niche-ification of models and with wholesale shifts that necessitate the introduction of EV or autonomous sub-brands, there is a growing sense that, with everyone shouting at the same time, no one can be heard.