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Lamborghini goes from carbon fiber to carbon neutral [w/video]

Draw up a list in your mind of automakers striving to "save the environment," and you might be forgiven for not ranking Lamborghini very high on impressions alone. After all, it only makes supercars with double-digit cylinder counts, displacing over 5.0 liters, and producing in excess of 600 horsepower. Hardly what you'd characterize as "green" modes of transportation, then. And though it recently showed a hybrid sports car concept, it has opted next to build an SUV instead. However the Raging Bull marque is out to rehabilitate its image by changing the reality of its carbon footprint. It's just not about to do so by watering down the supercars for which it is known. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." – Lamborghini CEO, Stephan Winkelmann This week the Italian automaker officially opened its new Trigeneration Plant – which is not, lest you think otherwise, an assembly facility spanning multiple eras of production. It's a new power plant, built on the site of the company's headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, that will generate its electricity, heating, and cooling, all from the same source of natural gas. The plant has an installed (potential) capacity of 1.2 megawatts, and will (practically speaking) be capable of generating over 25,000 MWh every year. That'd be enough to power all the houses in Sant'Agata, the otherwise sleepy town which Lamborghini shares with about 7,000 residents. The clean-burning facility is estimated to cut out 820 tons of CO2 every year, and by 2017 is slated to run on biofuel to raise that figure to a claimed 5,600 tons per year. The question is, who cares? Sure, people buying EVs and free-range chickens want to be assured that their buying habits fit their environmental conscience, but does the average Lamborghini buyer really care if their new supercar came from an environmentally friendly factory? "If we are going to do the things only because of the importance first thing for the customer, we would not be here anymore," Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann told us during roundtable discussion at the opening of the Trigeneration Plant. "We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation." "It would be ridiculous if you would say we are going to save the world.

One-off Lamborghini Revuelto Opera Unica took 435 hours to paint

Lamborghini turned the Revuelto, its new flagship model, into a one-off art car to celebrate its 60th birthday. Unveiled ahead of its public debut at the 2023 Art Basel show in Miami Beach, Florida, the 1,001-horsepower coupe named Opera Unica was designed in-house. Beyond commemorating 60 years of Lamborghini's V12-powered cars, the Opera Unica showcases what the brand's Ad Personam team is capable of. It was painted entirely by hand. The front end is finished in a color called Viola Pasifae, and the livery gradually fades into a shade of black called Nero Helene. That's just the base layer; Lamborghini then added blue, red, and orange accents to emphasize speed. Getting it perfect was more difficult than it might sound. Lamborghini notes that the livery required 76 hours of development and testing plus around 435 hours (that's over 18 days!) to apply. The finish touch is a 60th Anniversary logo on the hood that's only visible in the right light. That's just the exterior; the interior took 220 additional hours to complete. It's characterized by two-tone Nero Ade and Viola Acutus leather upholstery to echo the paint job's base layer and the 60th Anniversary logo embroidered into the seats and door panels. The color of the thread used matches the color of the brush strokes applied to the exterior. This color combination appears on the start button cover as well. "We wanted to create something purely artistic using brushes and a combination of colors, as if the Revuelto was a canvas. This is what fueled our inspiration for this special livery," summed up Mitja Borkert, the head of Lamborghini's design department, in a statement. It's business as usual under the body, meaning power for the Opera Unica comes from a gasoline-electric plug-in hybrid drivetrain built around a new, 6.5-liter V12. Crucially, the engine is naturally aspirated; Lamborghini resisted the urge to downsize and add turbos. The system also includes three electric motors and a 3.8-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. Its output checks in at 1,001 horsepower and 793 pound-feet of torque, which is enough for a manufacturer-claimed zero-to-62-mph time of 2.5 seconds and a top speed of over 217 mph. Lamborghini hasn't revealed what the future holds for the Opera Unica. It could end up in the company's museum in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, or it might find its way into private hands. Either way, you'll know it when you see it: this is the kind of one-off car you can't miss.

Celebrating Ferruccio Lamborghini's 100th birthday

A tremendous thorn in Ferrari's side was born 100 years ago today. His name was Ferruccio Lamborghini, and today his company's cars are among the wildest and most desirable on the market. While the people of Sant'Agata Bolognese are probably raising several glasses of vino to Mr. Lamborghini, Hemmings has put together a great read on the man behind the brand. Lamborghini's start in the auto industry is the stuff of legend. Unsatisfied with the cars he bought from Ferrari and infuriated after being snubbed by the company's founder, Enzo, Lamborghini added an eponymous auto manufacturer to his tractor-building efforts. The Hemmings piece chronicles this feud, but digs far deeper into the brand's early days. Did you know part of the reason Lamborghini founded his company in Sant'Agata was because of the absolutely killer deal the local government cut with the company's founder? Seriously, the government gave out interest-free loans and exemptions from corporate taxes for its first ten years. Not a bad deal. From hiring Giotto Bizzarrini to design the company's early V12 engines to the debut of the iconic Miura, there's a lot of information here about the man and the company he built, going up until the 1970s, when he sold his shares and retired at just 58 years of age. Head over to Hemmings for the full read. Related Video: