Retro Drive: Lamborghini Murciélago LP 650-4 Roadster

Journalists raved about it. Enthusiasts young and old dreamed about it. Ferrari feared it, and Kanye West rapped about it. Released for 2002, the Lamborghini Murciélago was just as significant as the Countach it traced its roots to but for different reasons. It signaled the start of a new era for the famed Italian brand. On a secondary level, this bull was stunningly advanced when new, and it has become charmingly old-school with time.

Lamborghini’s streak of delivery records is relatively recent, and the company’s future looked a lot less promising in the 1990s than it does in the 2020s. Consider this: it sold precisely 265 cars globally in 1999. In that era, even an annual increase of 20 cars was worth celebrating. Audi saw a great deal of potential in a small supercar manufacturer and signed a deal to buy Lamborghini in June 1998 for an estimated $110 million. Interestingly, it was Lamborghini that opened the talks when it asked Audi for the A8’s V-8 engine.

Audi and parent company Volkswagen made sweeping changes across Lamborghini after the take-over, and many of the projects that were in the pipeline were scrapped. These included a Diablo replacement tentatively called Canto and a smaller, entry-level model set to use the A8’s 4.2-liter V-8. The order is said to have come directly from Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Piëch. Lamborghini extended the Diablo’s life as it began designing a replacement from scratch, and Luc Donckerwolke was put in charge of exterior styling.

New from the ground up, the Murciélago was instantly recognizable as a Lamborghini yet it wasn’t a copy of an existing or a previous model. It was its own thing, with a striking, wedge-shaped silhouette and a muscular stance that made it look fast even when parked. The scissor doors remained—there’s no reason to get rid of such an emblematic feature—but the Murciélago gained cool features like intake flaps that automatically opened to send more air to the engine. Starting on a blank slate allowed Donckerwolke and his team to bring Lamborghini’s design language into the 21st century, and the Murciélago’s crisp lines later influenced the smaller, V-10–powered Gallardo. And, signaling a tectonic shift in Lamborghini’s design department, the new flagship was the first car that the brand created entirely using a CAD/CAM system, which in turn improved the fit and finish of the various body panels once production started.

The concept of ergonomics is difficult to accurately quantify, but the Murciélago’s predecessors (including the Countach) perfectly exemplify the lack of it. They’re cramped, they offer very little visibility, and they feature buttons in head-scratching places that will make you mutter an expletive in Italian. And that’s fine: these cars were literally designed around a big, mid-mounted V-12 with comfort added to the recipe as an afterthought, and this quirkiness helps define the character of a classic supercar. You get used to it, much like you ultimately get used to a redesigned smartphone interface that initially feels a little bit strange.

But the Murciélago is a different kind of supercar. I’m not going to tell you it’s spacious—Volvo makes some really roomy wagons if that’s your main priority—but it’s much easier to live with than a Diablo, even if your definition of living with a car is limited to driving it to cars and coffee once a month. You still sit low in a nicely bolstered seat, you can still hear (and feel!) the V-12 idling right behind you, and the view out of the door mirrors still gets your heart racing, but there’s far more space for taller drivers. The various controls are more intuitive, too, and the center console is slightly tilted toward the driver as a reminder that this time around it’s not exclusively about the engine. “See, we thought about you, too!”

Lamborghini also made not-insignificant improvements to the build quality, with fewer Lego-like hard plastics and a lot more leather. Call it the Audi touch if you want, except the brand resisted what must have been a very strong urge to go fishing in its parent company’s parts bin and instead paved its own road. Inside, the Murciélago represents a big leap forward over the Diablo but nonetheless manages to feel special. It helps that my test car, a Murciélago LP 650-4 Roadster finished in gray with orange accents, is owned by Lamborghini, maintained by the Polo Storico department, and has covered 2,000 kilometers (about 1,300 miles) since roaring out of the factory. Touchscreen aside, it feels like a time capsule.

The engine remains the car’s centerpiece. At launch, the Murciélago came with a 6.2-liter V-12 that made 575 horsepower at 7,500 rpm and 479 pound-feet of torque at 5,400 rpm. It was naturally aspirated, of course, as “turbo” was still a bad word in Sant’Agata Bolognese at the time. Those figures might sound a little tame for a Raging Bull, especially when you consider that the Revuelto puts 1,001 horses under your right foot, but they were absolutely mind-blowing in the early 2000s. Keep in mind that a 2002 Ferrari 360 used a 400-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8, while a 2002 Porsche 911 Carrera offered 320 horsepower from its 3.6-liter flat-six. Even the Dodge Viper, with a mighty 8.0-liter V-10, fell 125 horses short of the Murciélago.

We’re not talking about any old V-12, either. This is a distant evolution of the Bizzarrini V-12 that, with just 3.5 liters of displacement, made its debut in 1963 under the hood of the 350GT, Lamborghini’s first car. The 12-cylinder finally retired when the Aventador entered production in 2011 with a new, 6.5-liter V-12. For use in the Murciélago, the mid-mounted 12-cylinder was installed about two inches lower than in the Diablo to lower the center of gravity. Lamborghini achieved this by using a dry-sump lubrication system.

Lamborghini increased horsepower and displacement numerous times during the Murciélago’s life cycle. The “LP 650-4” designation appeared on a limited-edition Roadster released in 2010 to denote a 6.5-liter evolution of the V-12 that makes about 650 horsepower at 8,000 rpm. Production was limited to 50 units.

Granted, the Murciélago tips the scale at approximately 3,600 pounds, so it’s not exactly a lightweight, but it’s even quicker than the head-turning styling suggests. It’s quick even by modern standards, which is no small feat for a car approaching its 25^th birthday—enough that the speedometer is labeled in increments of 30 kilometers per hour: 30, 60, 90, and so on. It takes under four seconds to reach 100 kph (around 62 mph) from a stop, and the exhaust’s thunderous bark suggests the free-revving V-12 would be more than happy to increase the bid by another 100 kph with little prior notice. Designing a quick car is easier than ever, but the drama that goes with this acceleration is what makes the Murciélago memorable.

Every mash of the accelerator pedal is a momentous occasion, whether you’re behind the wheel or just walking by and minding your own business. If you like keeping a low profile, this is not the car for you.

Rear-biased all-wheel-drive comes standard regardless of how many pedals poke down into the narrow footwell. Lamborghini offered the Murciélago with a six-speed manual transmission linked to a beautiful gated shifter, and that’s the version you should keep an eye out for if you’re in the market for one. My test car is equipped with the E-Gear six-speed automatic linked to a pair of big, steering wheel-mounted paddles. In the 2000s, shift paddles had barely made the transition from the Formula One paddock to the showroom floor, and they made supercar owners feel a little bit like race car drivers. Much of the coolness wore off after the first flick, however. Yank the right paddle to shift up, wait for about half a second, and the transmission settles into the next gear with the kind of jerk you’d expect to feel on a mechanical bull.

Even with the automatic, the Murciélago’s best quality is the nebulous concept of being analog. Yes, there are driving aids—and thank the whimsical Italian supercar gods for them, because the rear tires are as wide as some coffee tables. The electronic help is never intrusive, however, and the driver remains responsible for what the chassis does and doesn’t do. Excellent brakes and steering that’s nicely weighted but a little vague in terms of feedback and on-center feel make the Murciélago much less daunting to drive than you might assume given its status as one of its era’s main poster cars. The suspension is, well, there, and it never lets you forget what you’re driving. There’s pretty much no body roll, and there’s pretty much no wheel travel.

As we predicted in 2023, Murciélago prices are going up — the model is becoming sought-after by younger collectors who read about it when it was new. And with precisely 4,099 units sold, we’re betting its star will continue to rise. It’s a raucous, V-12-powered Lamborghini flagship; what’s not to like?