The last Lamborghini Gallardo rolls off the production line
The last Lamborghini Gallardo has rolled off the production line after a ten-year run and 14,022 vehicles.
Introduced back in 2003 as part of the company’s 40th anniversary celebrations, the Gallardo represented a major change for the exotic Italian car maker. Coming on the heels of the larger Murcielago – which was introduced in 2001 – the Gallardo increased Lamborghini’s production from around 250 cars per year to a considerable bigger number of 2000.
In fact, since the birth of the company, about a half of the 30,000 cars it has sold have been Gallardo variants.
The Gallardo started development under Chrysler ownership, back when Lamborghini produced just one model line, the Diablo. Once the company passed into Indonesian ownership, plans for the junior supercar were shelved, to be then resurrected after the sale of the brand to Audi back in 1998.
It took five years for it to arrive on the market, but once it did the all-wheel-drive Lamborghini came equipped with a 5.0-litre V10, based on the 4.2-litre V8 from Audi. The first car was capable of producing 373kW, but after its update in 2005 the power increased to 387kW, with the Spyder version arriving in 2006.
2008 saw the roll out of the second-generation Gallardo LP 560-4, with a larger 5.2-litre engine, capable of producing 412kW. It then spawned two generations of ‘Superleggera’ cars, which meant reduced weight and increase power output, and starting with 2011 the base model of the Gallardo was offered in the form of the LP550-2, offering buyers the choice of a rear-wheel-drive car.
The last Gallardo was sold to an unnamed private buyer and was one of the many special editions of the Gallardo range, in this case it was a Gallardo LP570-4 Spyder Performante painted in Rosso Mars – also known as ‘Mars Red’.
