2013 Lamborghini Gallardo Lp550-2 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Bologna airport puts 631-hp Lamborghini follow-me car into service

Enthusiasts visiting Italy's Motor Valley could get a taste of the region's car-building tradition as soon as they land in Bologna. Airport officials renewed their partnership with Lamborghini to let a Huracan Evo loose on the tarmac. Lamborghini has provided the Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport with follow-me cars for several years. The latest raging bull to join the fleet is an all-wheel-drive Huracan Evo powered by a naturally-aspirated, 5.2-liter V10 that delivers 631 horsepower. It's painted in a shade of green named Verde Turbine Matte and it wears specific orange decals, a livery reminiscent of the one seen on the latest Evo-based Super Trofeo race car unveiled earlier in 2021. Pilots need more than a head-turning design to know where they're going, so the Huracan also gains a light bar. What is a "follow-me car" you may ask? The Huracan's main task is to meet an incoming plane at the end of the runway and guide it to the gate where its passengers will disembark. The driver is constantly in contact with the control tower, changes are not unheard of, so Lamborghini installed a radio in the cabin. How officials will decide who gets to drive the Huracan and who ends up in a 55-horsepower econobox hasn't been revealed; we predict an intense, winner-takes-all round of drawing straws (or tagliatelle, considering we're talking about a city globally known for its pasta-based dishes). Lamborghini's latest follow-me car will be in service until January 2022, so you might catch a glimpse of it after landing in Bologna. It's not always out, but it's easy to spot if it's on the clock because most of the other cars on the tarmac are small Fiat models, like the 500 and the Panda. And, if you're into airport car-spotting, keep your eyes peeled at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport: KLM still uses older Mercedes-Benz G-Class 4x4s as service vehicles. Featured Gallery Lamborghini Huracan Evo follow-me car at the Bologna airport View 13 Photos Marketing/Advertising Weird Car News Lamborghini Coupe Luxury

Top Gear names BMW i8 Car of the Year, Corvette, Ferrari, Mercedes also win big

The lads at Top Gear have released their listing of the finest cars of the past year, handing the ultimate honor to BMW's revolutionary i8 plug-in-hybrid supercar. "The i8 is a milestone in the annals of automotive history and a glorious statement for an exciting and positive future. The i8 delivers - and then some," the British mag wrote. The i8, though, was far from the only hybridized car to take victories. James May and Richard Hammond both highlighted hybrids as their personal cars of the year, with May saluting the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Hamster, unsurprisingly, heaping praise on the Porsche 918 Spyder. Jeremy Clarkson, meanwhile, opted to shock many by selecting not only an American car as his best of 2014, but giving the honor to of all things, a Corvette. Clarkson wasn't the only person to honor the USA's iconic sports car, with the new, 650-horsepower Z06 variant being named TG's Muscle Car of the Year. Other big winners include Mercedes-Benz, which TG honored for S-Class Coupe (Luxury Car of the Year), the new AMG GT (Sports Car of the Year) and the not-for-US C-Class Estate (Family Car of the Year). The 458 Italia Speciale A snagged a second win for Ferrari. The best of the rest include the Citroen C4 Cactus, Renault Twingo, Volkswagen Golf R, Lamborghini Huracan and Audi TT. Take a look below for the celebratory press blast from BMW. The BMW i8 wins Top Gear Car of the Year The BMW i8 has been named as Top Gear magazine's global Car of the Year 2014. The plug-in hybrid performance vehicle beat off some stiff competition from a host of other premium and luxury manufacturers to win the overall award. The editorial team of Top Gear commended the BMW i8 for its breadth of abilities. Its 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine combined with an electric motor gives searing acceleration and driver enjoyment but all wrapped in a package that takes BMW's EfficientDynamics philosophy to the extreme courtesy of CO2 emissions less than 49g/km and a 135mpg combined cycle figure. Charlie Turner, Editor in Chief at Top Gear magazine, said: "The BMW is a milestone in the annals of automotive history and a glorious statement for an exciting and positive future. The i8 delivers – and then some. It's the kind of car we should celebrate, a beautiful vision of the future, delivered now.

We visit the Lamborghini Museum at company HQ in Sant'Agata

Last week, Lamborghini invited us to stop by its Sant'Agata Bolognese headquarters to have a look around the factory and pick up a few technical tidbits about its new Huracán LP 610-4. It won't surprise you to learn this, but Lambo's foyer is pretty rad.
Rather than front its offices and factory with a gift shop and a reception desk, Lamborghini puts its amazing heritage on full display by offering up the corporate museum as a first impression to visitors. We had coffee in the morning and lunch after the press conference in this space, with stunning Italian concept cars and production models serving as an impressive backdrop to it all. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to share the Lamborghini collection with exotic-car crazed Autoblog readers (you know who you are), we did our best to capture everything we saw in the gallery here.
With some variation, the museum's two floors are separated by vintage: older models downstairs and newer up. When you walk through the front door, you're flanked by two of the coolest Lamborghinis in the marque's impressive history: a 350 GT to the left and a perfectly green Countach LP 400 on the right. Perhaps our favorite car in the whole joint, the Countach's Bertone body is still almost impossible to believe. Up close, we're reminded how design-driven this car is; the seats are so far inboard from the scissor doors that it's difficult to imagine that engineers ever agreed that the shape was a feasible one for production or actual driving.