2005 Gallardo 6-speed Glass Bonnet Call Chris @ 630-624-3600 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Lamborghini set an all-time sales record in 2019

Growing demand for the Urus helped Lamborghini set an all-time sales record in 2019. The company delivered 8,205 units, a significant 43% increase compared to 2018, and well over half of its sales came from its only SUV. Annual sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew by 66% to 2,162 units, but the United States remains the company's largest market by a long shot. This partially explains why the Urus (pictured) raced ahead the Aventador S and the Huracan Evo to become Lamborghini's best-selling model by a long shot. The assembly line at Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, rolled off 4,962 examples of the SUV in 2019, followed by 2,139 units of the Huracan Evo, which Lamborghini manufactures in a separate building at the same facility. The V12-powered Aventador S also made there logged 1,104 sales, an impressive figure considering it's Lamborghini's oldest and most expensive model. While Lamborghini is celebrating a record year, and its ninth-consecutive year of growth, it previously announced it plans to cap production at 8,000 units in 2020 in order to maintain a degree of exclusivity. "We must not go on growing forever," company boss Stefano Domenicali warned in 2019. It could ultimately reach the 10,000-car threshold, but only after it adds a fourth series-produced model to its range to balance it out. There's no word yet on what form the fourth car will take, though unverified rumors point to an electrified 2+2 tourer. Lamborghini nonetheless entered 2020 on a positive note. It's in the process of developing a hybrid variant of the Urus, it's putting the final touches on the track-bound ST-X variant, and it's shaping the Aventador's successor. It remains confident in its overall outlook, it affirmed in a statement accompanying its 2019 result. Enthusiasts devote a considerable amount of energy to bashing high-riding models made by luxury brands, but sales figures prove entering the SUV segment makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint. In 2019, Porsche delivered 92,055 examples of the Cayenne (a 29% increase over 2018) and its bestselling model was the smaller Macan, which found 99,944 buyers. Rolls-Royce thanked the Cullinan for the 25% jump in sales it recorded in 2019 (up to 5,152 units), while Bentley credited the Bentayga for a 5% increase to 11,006 cars. It's no wonder Aston Martin allegedly ditched the RapidE to focus on the DBX, and Ferrari wants a piece of the pie. Related Video:

Volkswagen Group names Paefgen head of classics program

You may remember the name Franz-Josef Paefgen. Until recently, the German engineer and executive was head of both Bentley and Bugatti. Before that he was chief executive of Audi, after working for several years at Ford. He technically "retired" earlier this year, but like the cars he helped create, an executive like Paefgen could never really retire. So it should come as little surprise that the Volkswagen Group has named Dr. Paefgen head of its Classic program.
In his new capacity, Paefgen will oversee the historic automobile activities of the entire VW Group, including those of Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Audi, Lamborghini, and of course Bentley and Bugatti. It strikes us as a suitable semi-retirement for the man responsible in no small part for the Bugatti Veyron and Bentley Mulsanne, to name just two, and who was decorated in 2006 by the ACO as the "Spirit of Le Mans" for his contribution to endurance racing. Read the official announcement after the break.

Lamborghini Aventador successor to use supercapacitors instead of batteries?

While we continue trying to zero in on the next-generation Lamborghini flagship and its specs, Lamborghini CTO Maurizio Reggiani spoke to Road & Track to offer glimpses and set a few things straight. Discussing the coming LB48H supercar, Reggiani said the use of supercapacitors in that limited-run supercar will be a "first jump" into a robust hybrid application for supercapacitors, and that Lamborghini "will prove that in a super sports car, it's possible to have this technology." We've known the LB48H would use supercapacitors, but we didn't — and frankly still don't — know how. Based on Reggiani's comment, and likely the fact that Lamborghini uses a special supercar to hint at what's coming in tech and design, RT takes Reggiani's comments to mean that the Aventador successor will "store its electric power electrostatically instead of electrochemically, as you would with a lithium-ion battery." A caveat to this comes in another of Reggiani's remarks. He said the brand hasn't given any indication when an Aventador successor will reach the market, and before that happens, the brand is deciding whether to do another special edition flagship. "There's the possibility to have a kind of final Aventador family member," he said, because the brand probably won't get another chance to make a non-hybrid V12 after the scissor doors come down on the Aventador. Sales of the 6.5-liter V12 monster are still on the rise, remember. The current Aventador already uses a supercapacitor for the starter battery, to run the stop-start system. And the Italian carmaker has been working with MIT for years on such technology previewed in the Terzo Millennio concept, and rolled out for prime time in the LB48H. It's hard to see supercapacitors alone serving the next flagship, though, because company CEO Stefano Domenicali has said that "we need to respect legislation. In certain places, you will need electrification to go into the city." Supercapacitors can boost the kind of fast-acting peak performance buyers expect of a V12 Lamborghini. But their specific energy is roughly one-tenth that of a lithium-ion battery, or less; to provide the kind of range needed for all-electric trips into a city, the flagship would need a trailer hitch to haul a Urus carrying the supercapacitor array. Lamborghini has already said the best-case scenario for the Aventador successor is a 330- to 440-pound weight gain because of the hybrid system.