'PLAY IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF RESEARCH,' said Albert Einstein (always good for a quote, that man). This car was born through play.
Back in 2017, when Lamborghini was putting the finishing touches to the Urus SUV, its senior engineers were charging around the Strada Bianca dirt track at the Nardo development ground in southern Italy. While testing the Urus, we were in love with the driving on this course,' grins Lamborghini's likeably enthusiastic chief technical officer, Rouven Mohr. 'We thought: "Wouldn't it be amazing to drive on this course in our super sports cars?"""
Head of design Mitja Borkert takes up the story. 'We were so excited by the idea, I called my guys and said: "We need to start sketching." We made a third-scale design model, Rouven liked it a lot and I said to him: "Why don't we build a demonstrator?" He said: "Yeah! We have an old Huracán durability development car-free." So I set about designing the cladding and so on...'
Everybody in Lamborghini's inner circle who drove the demonstrator was captivated by it; even those initially sceptical about whether or not there might be a market for such a car. When Stephan Winkelmann returned to Lamborghini as CEO in 2020, during an epic design meeting in which both the Revuelto hybrid and modern-day Countach were approved, a production version got the green light. When we showed him the Sterrato,' Borkert recalls, he said: "That's what we need to do. We should always be different."
This story is from the July 2023 edition of Evo UK.
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This story is from the July 2023 edition of Evo UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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THE PERFORMANCE CAR LANDSCAPE WOULD HAVE looked very different over the last five decades without BMW. Its M division, founded in 1972, has produced some of the best driver’s cars ever to hit the road, and in the process has provided a stream of benchmark models for its rivals to chase. In recent years, stricter emissions regulations, downsizing and electrification have seen some of those rival cars falter, yet by and large BMW’s M machines have remained strong. In fact, some rank among the greatest the department has made think of the eCoty-winning M2 CS and M5 CS while others are the only options worth recommending in their respective segments. Price tags have risen with performance, however, putting those latest offerings out of reach for many, but the marque’s popularity means there are numerous earlier M models available on the second-hand market for far more attainable figures. Here are four of our favourites.
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