The Lamborghini Silhouette, the first official 'open' Lamborghini.

Format : 750 x 342

Size : 69 Kb

Lamborghini Silhouette

During the mid-seventies, Lamborghini wasn't in very good shape, the Urraco costed too much putting into production, and it didn't sell quite enough, and Lamborghini was in no condition to consider a replacement, so the only thing they could do was to develop the Urraco into a new car that would sell better. Bertone was contacted for this redesigning, and their first prototype used round wheel-arch extenders and a rather special rear window arrangement, but this design was further developed into the show car on the 1976 Geneva Auto Show, and was designated the new Lamborghini Silhouette. One could clearly recognise the Urraco styling in the Silhouette, but this car was the first official 'open' Lamborghini, the Silhouette featured a targa-style roof arrangement which caused the 2+2 accomodation of the Urraco to be reduced to only two seats, the removable hard-top could be stored behind the front seats. The Bertone restyling also included squared-off wheel-arch extenders, combined with a deep front spoiler incorporating the oil cooler and front brake air-scoops, the wheel design looked like that of the Bravo show-car, and were now 15-inch diameter (the Urraco used 14-inch rims), the power of the V-8 engine was put onto the pavement through massive, state-of-the-art Pirelli P7 high performance tires. The louvres from the Urraco were abandoned and the roofline was now a tunnelback, a roll-over cage was built into the rear roof area to protect the passenger and driver in case of an accident. The dashboard was also completely redesigned, more ergonomic and contoured towards the driver. The complete body/chassis unit was derived from the Urraco P300, substantially strengthened to go topless, with the engine now uprated to 265 bhp, the Silhouette was just as fast as the P300, and with the same good road behaviour together with the open air option, the Silhouette should have sold very good, but it didn't. The Silhouette inherited the design faults from the P300, also at that time, the workmanship wasn't up to the normal standards for Lamborghini, and the potential buyers were worried by the weak financials of Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini. This poor financial base also kept Lamborghini from certifying cars for their potentially biggest market, the United States. Actually no official Lamborghini was exported to the United States from 1977 up to 1982, only a very few grey-market imports were brought into the States, and only a couple of these were Silhouettes. All these problems added up to the disappearance of the Silhouette after only two years of production, with a total of a mere 52 units, this Lamborghini can be considered to be a very good investment, if you can find one off course, because today only 31 are known to remain. But the Silhouette wasn't the end of the Lamborghini V-8 experience, it would be redesigned into the Jalpa at the beginning of the Eighties, which would turn into a success at last.

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