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Monday, June 20, 2011

The Most Important Lamborghini That Never Was



This is the Marzal, the most important Lamborghini that never was.
This car, the love child of 50 square feet of glass and half a Lamborghini Miura engine, was the epitome of Lamborghini’s pre-supercar design philosophy. It was one of a kind, built in 1967, and it recently sold for $2.1 million.
jalopnik
That Lamborghini became a maker of brash, mid-engined German supercars is a strange quirk of history. When Ferruccio Lamborghini launched his company, he essentially wanted to be the anti-Ferrari: Someone who built very fast, yet very comfortable automobiles. He sought to build grand touring cars, not the race-cars-with-license-plates-and-headlights Enzo Ferrari was selling at the time.
Then a skunkworks group invented the modern supercar in the shape of the Miura. The seeds of the company that would build outrageous supercars were sown. You have to wonder what Ferruccio would make of, say, a Gallardo LP 570-4 Spyder Performante.
The Marzal is the apotheosis of the original Lamborghini ethos.
Designed by Marcello Gandini, the Bertone designer who brought us the Miura and Countach, it was the dream of a clean and beautiful sci-fi future made real. It was long and low, with gullwing doors, 50 square feet of glass and just half an engine.
Well, half a Lamborghini engine.
Like no Lamborghini ever made, the Marzal was propelled by a 2.0-liter straight-six good for 175 horsepower. It was mounted transversely in the rear to maximize interior space, a twist on the way Alec Issigonis approached the Mini. The interior was hexagons run wild, and the car had so much glass that it looks more like an X-ray than a fleeting X-ray than a big Lamborghini.
The Marzal made its debut at the 1967 Geneva Motor Show, then went off to the Bertone Design Study Museum, although it made a public appearance at the 1996 Concours Italiano in Monterey, California. It sold for $2.1 million at RM Auctions’s annual Villa d’Este auction in May.
The new owner won’t have to treat it like a museum piece; for the same price as a fleet of Aventadors, the buyer received a fully operational car. Its new owner won’t necessarily have to treat it as a museum piece: for that price of six Aventadors, he received a fully working car.
Although the Marzal was a one-off, it spawned the Espada. I once had the good fortune to spend an afternoon in one, and even if it is more traditional than the Marzal, it shares the concept’s spaciousness. Although I am 6 feet 2 inches tall, I was quite comfortable even in the back seat. It would make a perfect car for a family of four.
Photos: Bertone


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