LAMBORGHINI GALLARDO

Grandaddy to the Temerario and the car that transformed Lamborghini was the brilliant, V10-engined Gallardo. We get reacquainted with a Lambo legend

-  RICHARD MEADEN

CAN IT REALLY BE 21 YEARS SINCE Lamborghini introduced the Gallardo? Looking at this fabulous Caelum Blue example, it's hard to believe. With its successor - the Huracán - now replaced by the V8 hybrid Temerario, what better excuse to revisit the car that transformed Lamborghini's fortunes and took the fight to Ferrari? Prior to the Gallardo's launch in 2003, there hadn't been a new entrylevel model since the Jalpa in 1982.

Given that the Jalpa was a quick-and-dirty rehash of the 1976 Silhouette, which was itself a restyled two-seater evolution of the 2+2 Urraco launched in 1972, it's fair to say Sant'Agata's track record for smaller supercars was one of quirky, eccentric and somewhat makeshift efforts.

Still, it says a lot for the troubled state of the company in the 1980s that the Jalpa was credited with helping to turn its fortunes around, despite selling just 410 units in the space of six years. For context, when the Jalpa went out of production in 1988, Lamborghini was still building the Countach and LM002, cars that seem embedded in the company's formative days. Both those behemoths would soon cease production, leaving Lamborghini surviving on sales of its then-new flagship, the Diablo, from 1990 all the way to 2001.

Given that Audi acquired the keys to Ferruccio's kingdom in 1998 it seems equally surprising that the gnarly old Diablo was still haunting the production halls some three years into Ingolstadt's tenure. Only when the venerable flagship was succeeded by the Murciélago did Lamborghini's trajectory begin to point skywards. The Gallardo was launched a scant 18 months later, lighting an afterburner that powered the marque's relentless rise.