Why I think the early manual Lamborghini Murcielago is the ultimate 2000’s supercar.

"Lamborghini | Murciélago | LP580 | LT 980 | Mid-Levels | Hong Kong | China" by Christian Junker is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjunker/4865171865

The Murcielago, Lamborghini’s fourth flagship super car and in my opinion, the best. It, to me is the ultimate 2000’s car and here’s why. While being styled by a Belgian under the supervision of Lamborghini’s parent company Audi, it was the last true Lamborghini. It somehow just screamed Lamborghini without going ridiculously overboard like it’s successor, the Aventador. It brought Lamborghini into the 21st century while still retaining a bit of madness that the Italian brand was known for, one example being the intakes that open and close on the wings of car. I can see it now, the Audi executive explaining a more sensible way of doing it and being vetoed by a bunch of Italians with suspiciously wide pupils and white baggies. I also think that it, along with its rivals at the time were the last gasp of the classic supercar.

"Lamborghini Murcielago" by 98octane is under license under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 , https://www.flickr.com/photos/98octane/3950075947

Big N/A mid-engined cars with manual transmissions with the benefits of more modern features. You could have your cake and eat it rowing through your own gears WITH working functional air conditioning. After this generation of cars semi-auto and D.C.T transmissions became the only option for cars of this caliber. Lastly an early Murcielago is now a Lamborghini you can own without looking like “the kind of guy that buys a Lambo”. This mantel was passed from the Mercy to the Gallardo and onto the King of having a Lamborghini just to say you have one, the Huracan. It’s now too old to be used to flex on people. So it’s now even cooler.

I would like to state for the record that this is only about the early Murcielago. The later cars lost something, in fact the Mercy is the only flagship Lambo to get worse as it continued production as Audi tried to turn it into a hardcore track weapon which on paper is better but is to hard core for the road but to big and heavy on track. They also became to fussy looking. The purer LP 580 was its ultimate form with the later variants getting the Aventador treatment.

While others do it better no one does it like Lamborghini, the manual Murcielago was proof of that.