LAMBORGHINI Diablo

SUCCESSOR TO THE LEGENDARY COUNTACH REALLY WAS A SUPERCAR WITH A DEVILISH SIDE

- NATHAN PONCHARD

PEOPLE CLAIM, FOR not entirely sane reasons, that Ferraris should only ever be red, but we would argue that statement rings truer for the original Lamborghini Diablo.

Sant’Agata’s supercar may have also been offered in yellow, white, silver, blue or black, but if ever a colour was perfectly matched to a nameplate, it’s ‘Diablo Rosso’.

Unveiled in January 1990, the Diablo kicked offa great decade for outlandish supercars. Four years in development, Lamborghini named its long-awaited Countach replacement after a famous Spanish fighting bull – continuing a tradition that began with the ’66 Miura – though ‘Diablo’ is also Spanish for ‘devil’, which could’ve been a metaphor for this car’s journey from Italian-styled prototype to American-restyled production car.

As a successor to the legendary Miura (1966-’73) and Countach (1974-’90), it’s impossible to overstate the expectation on project P132 (the Diablo’s codename). By the time the era-defining Countach LP5000 ‘Quattrovalvole’ appeared in 1985, Lamborghini’s razor-edged supercar had been dominating petrolhead’s fantasies for more than a decade and management knew its replacement needed to be something special.

But when company president Emile Novaro reiterated the Diablo’s original brief to our very own Peter Robinson in a January 1990 interview, he said it was simply “to create a Countach successor.”