Lamborghini Brought Its Full Strategic Arsenal to Motor Valley Fest 2022
Between May 26 and 29, Lamborghini spread four very different cars across two cities and sent three of its most senior executives to the podium. The occasion was Motor Valley Fest 2022, the annual open-air celebration of Emilia-Romagna’s automotive corridor held between Modena and Bologna. The company, though, treated it as something far more deliberate than a regional car show.
Chairman and CEO Stephan Winkelmann joined the Motor Valley Table, a round table assembling the heads of the region’s major automotive brands. CFO and Managing Director Paolo Poma spoke on a finance panel addressing open innovation and the competitive pressures facing legacy and new-tech companies alike. Chief Human Capital Officer Umberto Tossini took the stage for a session on the digital and technical skills reshaping the industry. Meanwhile, a Huracán STO and Urus occupied floor space at the Autopromotec show in Bologna, the Terzo Millennio concept sat in the Electric City exhibition area, and a grey Aventador Ultimae stood in the courtyard of Modena’s Accademia Militare.
A naturally aspirated V12 farewell, a track-homologated V10, a super SUV that prints money, and an electric concept car that still looks like it arrived from 2040. Lamborghini placed every chapter of its story in public view simultaneously, and the executive discussions provided the connective tissue between them. The result was less a festival appearance and more a strategic brief delivered in the open air.
The Executive Vision: What Winkelmann, Poma, and Tossini Actually Signaled
Sending three C-suite executives to a regional festival might look like corporate box-ticking. Each panel, however, addressed a different axis of the transformation Lamborghini was navigating in 2022, and together they sketched a remarkably coherent picture.
Winkelmann’s Motor Valley Table session focused on what Lamborghini describes as the challenges of remaining a leader in high-performance driving while adapting communication for a new era. For a CEO who returned to Sant’Agata in late 2020 to steer the brand through electrification, the subtext was unmistakable: the driving experience cannot be sacrificed on the altar of regulation, but the way Lamborghini explains itself to buyers must evolve.
Poma’s finance panel tackled the investment architecture behind that evolution. The CFO addressed how legacy performance brands compete for capital and talent against technology-native companies, and the role open innovation plays in bridging that gap. Lamborghini’s electrification roadmap requires sustained, strategic investment, and Poma’s presence on that stage confirmed the company was thinking about funding its future with the same rigor it applies to lap times.
Tossini’s session on digital skills and the shifting social context of talent acquisition carried a pointed message of its own. As Lamborghini moves toward hybrid and eventually electric powertrains, the engineers it needs look different from the ones who perfected naturally aspirated V12 calibration. Software, battery management, and integrated vehicle dynamics demand new expertise. Tossini’s talk acknowledged that reality publicly, positioning Lamborghini as a company actively recruiting for the cars it will build in 2025 and beyond, not just the ones it sold in 2022.
The Aventador Ultimae: A V12 Farewell Displayed with Purpose
Placing the Aventador Ultimae at the Accademia Militare in Modena was a deliberate piece of staging. The military academy is one of the city’s most prestigious institutions, and parking Lamborghini’s final pure V12 production car in its courtyard elevated the model from showpiece to monument.
The example on display bore the production number “001 di 350,” visible through the side window. The Ultimae closed out a V12 lineage stretching back through the Aventador, Murciélago, and Diablo to the original Miura. Displaying the very first of 350 coupés at a festival celebrating the Motor Valley’s future was a way of saying: we know what we are leaving behind, and we are not leaving it quietly.
For collectors tracking the secondary market, the Ultimae remains a significant marker. It represents the last Lamborghini to rely entirely on a naturally aspirated twelve-cylinder engine without hybrid assistance. The Revuelto, which succeeded it, pairs its V12 with three electric motors. Whether the Ultimae’s pure-combustion status translates into long-term collector premiums is a question the market will answer over the next decade, but Lamborghini clearly understood the car’s symbolic weight when it chose where and how to display it.
The exclusive 'Aventador Ultimae' badge and production number '001 di 350' are proudly displayed. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
The Terzo Millennio: Lamborghini’s Electric Concept Still Provokes Questions
In the Electric City area, Lamborghini’s Terzo Millennio concept sat on a blue floor patterned with circuit-board traces, its matte black surfaces and illuminated orange wheel accents looking every bit as theatrical as they did when MIT and Lamborghini first presented the car in 2017. The concept explored ideas that still sound speculative years later: supercapacitor energy storage integrated into the body panels, self-healing carbon fiber structures, and an all-electric powertrain architecture.
None of those technologies appeared in production form in 2022, and Lamborghini did not use Motor Valley Fest to announce a timeline for a fully electric road car. The company’s subsequent moves, including the Lanzador concept revealed in 2023, suggest the production EV will look quite different from the Terzo Millennio’s radical proportions. Yet displaying the concept alongside the Ultimae created a visual argument that few other brands could replicate: here is where we came from, and here is one version of where we might go.
The competitive context adds texture. Ferrari had already launched the hybrid SF90 Stradale and 296 GTB by mid-2022. McLaren introduced the Artura. Lamborghini, by contrast, was still showing a concept car in an exhibition tent. Whether that reads as caution or confidence depends on your perspective, but the Direzione Cor Tauri strategy the company announced in 2021 made clear that full electrification would come on Lamborghini’s schedule, not the industry’s.
The radical design and illuminated wheels of the Terzo Millennio concept car showcase Lamborghini's future vision. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Current Lineup on Display: The Huracán STO and Urus Held Down the Present
While the Ultimae and Terzo Millennio handled the emotional bookends, the Huracán STO and Urus at Bologna’s Autopromotec show represented the commercial engine room. The STO, displayed in white with blue accents and its distinctive rear wing clearly visible, is the track-derived road car whose name (Super Trofeo Omologata) directly references Lamborghini’s one-make racing series. The green Urus beside it needed no introduction: by 2022, the super SUV accounted for more than half of Lamborghini’s annual deliveries and had fundamentally reshaped the company’s financial profile.
Displaying both at an aftermarket industry exhibition rather than a pure consumer show was a smart move. Autopromotec attracts professionals from across the automotive service sector, and putting Lamborghini’s most commercially important models in front of that audience reinforced the brand’s relevance beyond the enthusiast bubble. The STO reminded the trade that Lamborghini builds serious performance hardware; the Urus reminded them that the brand now operates at volume levels that matter for parts, service, and aftermarket business.
The STO in particular represented a model nearing the end of its lifecycle in 2022. The Huracán platform would eventually give way to the Temerario, and anyone considering an STO purchase at that point was effectively buying into a naturally aspirated V10 that would not be repeated. That context made the car’s presence at Motor Valley Fest more than a simple product display.
The powerful front fascia of the white Huracan STO illuminates the exhibition hall with its bright headlights. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Cultivating the Next Generation: The Innovation and Talents Stand
Lamborghini maintained a stand at the festival’s Innovation and Talents section on May 26 and 27, with a dedicated talent talk scheduled for May 27 featuring representatives from the company’s Human Capital and Organization department. The section was designed to connect companies, universities, and emerging professionals in the Motor Valley region.
The subtext connects directly to Tossini’s panel discussion. Lamborghini was not just talking about the skills gap created by electrification and digitalization; it was physically present at the recruiting fair. For a company based in Sant’Agata Bolognese, a town of roughly 7,000 people, the ability to attract top engineering and software talent from Bologna’s universities and beyond is an existential priority. Every hybrid and electric Lamborghini that reaches production will depend on people the company is trying to find right now.
What Motor Valley Fest 2022 Revealed About Lamborghini’s Roadmap
Strip away the festival atmosphere and what Lamborghini presented in late May 2022 was a company in deliberate transition. The Ultimae closed a chapter. The Terzo Millennio gestured toward an electric future without committing to specifics. The STO and Urus demonstrated the commercial present. And three executives explained, in public and on the record, how the brand intended to fund, staff, and communicate its way through the change.
With the benefit of hindsight, the roadmap Lamborghini sketched at Motor Valley Fest played out largely as signaled. The Revuelto arrived in 2023 as a hybrid V12 flagship. The Urus SE added plug-in hybrid capability to the SUV. The Temerario replaced the Huracán with a twin-turbo V8 hybrid architecture. Each of those cars required exactly the kind of financial commitment, talent pipeline, and brand communication strategy that Winkelmann, Poma, and Tossini discussed on stage in Modena.
Few competitors used a regional festival to lay out their strategic thinking this transparently. Lamborghini, characteristically, chose an open-air festival in its home region, put its cars on the ground and its executives on the stage, and let the audience connect the dots. The message was confident, coherent, and, as it turned out, accurate.
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