The Lamborghini Madura was done in my second term as part of the Lamborghini Raw Materials Project led by Prof. Dr. Othmar Wickenheiser, where all students at the school could take part in.
Ferruccio Lamborghini’s appreciation to Spanish culture and bull fighting/running led to naming all Lamborghini cars after some famous bulls or some places or families connected to bulls. Respecting this fact, the car is named after the island in Indonesia, which is famous for bull races.
The Madura is a proposal for the first hybrid Lamborghini scheduled for 2016. Doing a car more efficient and more nature-friendly, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be exciting, good-looking and fast. But in my opinion this new propulsion system should be represented on the looks of the car.
The body is rather cab-backward style, which is new for today’s Lambo range, but as side view silhouette is not strange to Lamborghini, namely the Lamborghini Silhouette and Urraco had very similar body-cab compositions.
Proportionally, the car has rather short wheelbase, and equally long overhangs. The short wheelbase gives it better agility and driving performance. The long overhangs on the other hand are visually shortened by playing with thin layering surfaces which are part of separate body elements.
The front is very sleek and aerodynamic. It consists of the bonnet, with electric engine underneath, and spoiler with blades between for more depth of the design, and better cW result. The headlights are very thin and horizontally oriented to emphasize the car width.
The tail is analog to the front. There is again play with more bodies and blades in between. They intersect by overlapping or flowing parallel. The spoilers as special features, grow out of the side panels and are connected with laser beams when braking, as a symbol for the electric drive.