The Cosworth-developed 235-hp 2.5-liter 16-valve four-cylinder whined in the background, like someone else’s ill-behaved toddler, begging for punishment. I giggled like the cat that just swallowed the ca(r key)nary. I fantasized about driving it to somewhere hostile to America that might accept me as an un-extraditable automotive exile—maybe Canada.
Lamborghini has been losing its mind for 60 years. I drive a litany of cars from its history to prove this.
In my youth, in the Malaise Era Detroit of the 1970s and 1980s, a tachometer was a rare sight. This was, in part, because nearly everybody in the Motor City still drove American cars back then and domestic cars, even ostensible performance cars like my brother’s 1978 Pontiac Firebird or my friend’s manual-transmission Ford Tempo, didn’t have a tach. I find out why.
How Buick’s Secret Skunkworks GNX Turbo’d Everything in the 80s/90s, Including an Electra Wagon and a RWD Reatta
“They said, women aren’t buying. I said, you’re not inviting them,” Sisson said emphatically. “Men show up, women need to be invited.”
With its extraordinarily fast front windshield angle, its rounded box passenger compartment, its blacked-out roof, and its injected-molded plastic body panels, the Lumina APV looked more like a Syd Mead concept for an Eighties sci-fi thriller than a GM design for an Eighties suburban hauler.
For all of the reasons, but especially the shit-talking.
“V-12 is the top level of engineering you can imagine,” says Reggiani. “A V-12 is born to be like a singer.”
A wholly subjective list, that obviously includes the Camargue.
“Besides being cheap to buy? I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about them.”