The Lamborghini Silhouette---Lamborghini's Unsung Hero.

Look at it. Beautiful, isn’t it? To me, this Embodies what the ‘70’s was, in terms of Car Design: The Era of the Wedge-shape. Of course, it wasn’t all Smooth-Sailing back then, the Oil/Energy Crisis had hit rather hard, forcing numerous, bigger manufacturers to make more economical cars, with the smaller companies, essentially left hanging. Then, in the mid-70’s, The Left were revolting, there were riots as close as Bologna, where a man was shot. And with all his companies struggling due to the Crisis, Ferruccio Lamborghini sold his final shares in Automobili Lamborghini in ‘74, giving control to Georges-Henri Rossetti and Rene Leimer. Lamborghini’s famed Test Driver, Bob Wallace, had left the company in ‘75, and the line-up was only the Urraco(The Urraco plays a big part in this) and the Countach, neither of which were homologated for the huge US Market. In short, Lamborghini was a small independent company with something of a cash flow problem.

The board of directors looked at the Lucrative targa market exploited by Porsche and Ferrari in America, and unanimously decided that they had to add Lambo’s first Open-Top car to the line-up. The obvious choice to form the basis of the car? The Uracco, Lamborghini’s 2+2 which debuted at the Turin Motor Show in 1970. Designed by Lambo’s go-to designer, Marcello Gandini at Bertone, it had a sheet-metal platform chassis built in Modena by Marchesi. The original P250 apparently wasn’t great, with the L240 transversely-mounted V8 feeling underpowered and having a propensity for breaking timing belts. However, the later P300 that arrived in ‘75 fixed this with a more powerful, 250 hp 3-litre V8—Complete with timing chains.

Now, to some of us, the idea of just lopping off the roof of a Urraco P300 might seem like a relatively short, and maybe even cheap development process, and in some ways it was, since the Urraco chassis didn’t really need that much strengthening, but the Silhouette, or, as it was internally known, the P118, had a very crucial difference. The Chassis Development was masterminded by Gian Paolo Dallara(Then on the board of Lambo, and the same mastermind behind Dallara Autmobili) and much of the focus directed upon the Pirelli P7 Tyre.

Interestingly enough, Dallara called the P7 tyre ‘the greatest single component breakthrough in the history of the car’ at the time of the P7’s launch. The P7’s new low-profile design allowed a bigger contact patch and larger diameter rims. For comparison’s sake, the P400 Countach had 215/70’s in 14-inch rims at the rear, while the Silhouette had 285/40’s on 15-inchers. Those flat-top wheelarches(attached to existing Urraco pressings to save cash) were a direct result of the new tyres. Initially, the car, with MacPherson struts all round, was particularly sensitive to ‘bump steer’ on the new P7’s, but modifications were made to the steering arms and lower suspension arms. The lost ground clearance was made up with spacers above the top mounts. Dallara loved the Group 5 ‘Silhouette’ racer so much that he named the new car after them.

On the 25th of September 1976, the first car was completed, but during it’s 4-year-production run, only 52 were made, and the company would later go into receivership. Prospective buyers had to be pretty keen on the car too, as cash-strapped Lamborghini would ask them to pay up front. Only around 40 of the 52 are still thought to exist. Its worth noting that while the Silhouette was made to cash in on the convertible-hungry American market, it was never sold there, since the V8 never met Californian emissions regs—Partly explaining the rather small production run.

Now, if you want one, and you probably do(Or not), well, here’s the kicker: Valuing one is rather hard as they don’t usually come up on sale. They might be similar in value to glassfibre-bodied Ferrari 308s: Upwards of 150 thousand quid, or maybe they aren’t. Nobody knows. But the value it has to Lamborghini though..Is much harder to gauge. Yes, it had a very limited production run, but it brought in much-needed cash during a period so lean, it eventually went bankrupt. But, on the far side of that bankruptcy, the Silhouette would later provide the basis for the Jalpa, which helped to drag Lamborghini through the ‘80’s before eventually being sold to Chrysler.

In short, without this, it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have Lamborghini with us today.

…And that’s about it. All you really need to know about the Lamborghini Silhouette. The car that saved Lamborghini from being consigned to the ever-lengthening list of companies which went bankrupt and became forgotten, with the people from the generations after possibly never knowing about it. Its not the quickest, but it’s beautiful, it’s not something that’s seen everyday, and that’s just as well, because this car is the kind of car, where for those who know it, know. Those who don’t….Simply don’t matter. People in their Gallardo’s might call it a replica or some knock-off, but don’t care about them. They don’t matter. They don’t know what it is, they don’t know what value it holds to its makers, they don’t know that without it, the company which makes their Gallardo’s might not be here today. Feel free to leave advice and overlooked details down in the comments, and now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a break from writing two articles in a Day. And 3 in a weekend. And from my laptop.

See you at the next one.

Here’s some of the figures I forgot to mention: 0-60 was acheived in 6.5 seconds. 0-100 in 16.1 seconds. The top speed would be around 160 mph.

[Writers Note: Hey guys. If you’ve read up to this point, then, again, thanks for sticking around. This article, was driven more by emotion than anything else, I just had this urge to cover this car, and I literally couldn’t wait till the next weekend, so I began writing this just after posting the previous article about the Megane R26. This is probably the first ‘Real’ article to use this new, shorter writing style. The Megane R26, to me, was both a Test Bed and a Article. This, is one of the very few articles I’ve written that weren’t driven by a Calculating Side of me, this was driven more by emotions, rather than anything else. I hoped you enjoyed it. There may be a few errors: This was so heavily emotion-driven I might not have all the facts correct. Tell me about them and I’ll change it. Thanks again.—-Joel.]