Toward the end of 1998, a rather exclusive Diablo was built, a Diablo with a twin-turbo charged engine, pumping out nearly 900 Bhp.
This car was built by the Swiss based Uwe Gemballa Design Studio’s, run by a man who became world famous with his Porsche based tuning like the Avalange and the recent Extremo, information on both these cars can be found at the official Uwe Gemballa web site.
For his Lamborghini based special he started out with a Diablo VT Roadster and installed a Lotec designed dual-turbo system on the massive V-12, the result can be seen on this page. The engine compartment was slightly modified to be able to contain the two turbo-compressors, who were actually installed in place of the original exhaust system. Therefore the four pipes underneath the rear bumper are now connected to a more open race-type exhaust system that however still contains a special tuned catalytic converter, just to keep this rocket street-legal.
In this form, the big 5.7-Liter V-12 engine is capable of putting 900 Bhp on all four wheels, by the way, these wheels are very similar to the Strosek Tuned wheels, I think Gemballa borrowed them there. Later the engine was detuned to a mere 750 Bhp to avoid causing long term problems by creating a highly tuned engine.
On the outside nothing changed actually, Uwe Gemballa didn’t mount new body panels or a new rear wing, everything remained standard, probably to be able to outrun a ‘normal’ Diablo without the other driver knowing what hit him, this Diablo Twin Turbo is a real wolf in disguise, capable of outrunning just about everything it can encounter on the road, because it is in fact a road car, and not a highly-tuned race car.
According to the Gemballa Studio’s, the Lotec Twin-Turbo charger is very stable and shouldn’t pose any problems when maintenance is done at the normal intervals.
The car featured on these pages was for sale at the beginning of 1999, for more information check out the official Gemballa Site, during a test of a French car magazine, this car was taken to a top speed of 410 Km/h or 255 Mph, really impressive.