HEN YOU’VE driven
only a mile in a car, and
it has left you confused
and just a little bit
scared, does that make
it special? I don’t know,
but is there another
word to describe the
Lamborghini LM002?
Just look at it! Wherever
it goes, fingers are pointed by the dozen, mobile
phones are reached for and jaws are dropped.
Lamborghini’s gigantic SUV came into being more
or less by accident, the residue of a military project
that, sadly, failed to impress the military. That DNA
oozes from this car. The evil howl of its engine and
the shadow it casts over anything in its path confirms
just how intimidating this machine is. If a Countach
or Diablo is a rarity, an LM002 is from another world
completely. That’s it – maybe alien is a better word.
In its day, people who knew about cars scrambled
over each other to say how Lamborghini was too
good for the LM002, how the company should go
back to making the cars it was famous for. Never
one to care much about other people’s opinions,
Lamborghini didn’t kill the LM002
off. It stuck with it, and exploited
the car’s ‘specialness’ to enhance it
own aura quite masterfully.
Granted, Lamborghini neve
made another SUV after the LM00
disappeared in 1993 (until the Urus),
but it really didn’t need to. The LM
W
‘Heavy’ doesn’t begin to describe the clutch – it feels like you’re
became the stuff of legend, maybe even more than
the Countach – that may explain why the likes of Tina
Turner, Sylvester Stallone and Mike Tyson all owned
one. It attracted unsavoury types too – including
Muammar Gaddafi and Pablo Escobar. Time to get
in and explore then. Terry Pratchett would probably
have enjoyed the ride, because the combination of
surrealism and parody is striking.
Arguably, there isn’t a car in the world that is as
defined by its clutch as this. Of course, with its four-
wheel drive and that amazing 5.2-litre Countach V12
engine up front it was always going to need a heavy-
duty clutch, but what Lamborghini
came up with is frankly baffling. ‘Heavy’
doesn’t begin to describe it – it feels like
you’re physically separating the gearbox
from the engine using only your left
leg. Reversing the thing down a narrow
road with obstacles on both sides is
pure torture. You’ll find yourself trying
to feather the clutch so you’re going slowly enough to
see every obstacle around you. You can’t expect any
help from the wing mirrors, because they’d frankly be
too small even on a Fiat Panda. Continued use of a
clutch like this causes so much leg ache that you have
to stop and rest every minute or so.
Hard work, then, but this beast
does reward as well. Take the engine
- it mesmerises from the second you
start it. It snorts, hisses and roars,
shooting fireballs through its exhaust.
And it is huge – it hardly fits under
the giant bonnet, and even then only
THE LM002’s life story
is a little, well, ridiculous.
Lamborghini was wooing
the US Army with its
Lamborghini Militaria- (hence ‘LM’). It all
started with the Cheetah
prototype. Lambo stuffed
a heavy Chrysler V8 in
the back – which made
it tip over on just about
every climb, turning it
into a laughing stock. By
the time Lamborghini
came back with the
front-engined LM002, the
military had already taken
its business elsewhere.
So Lambo turned it into
a luxurious SUV, which
debuted in 1986 and
stayed in production until- Rumour has it that
some Middle Eastern
armies did
buy a few
LM002s, but
it’s not completely certain
that this car ever saw any
military action. In the end,
only 301 LM002s were
ever built. So it has always
been an extremely rare
machine. A handful have
been privately imported
to Australia, but if youwant one yourself, you’ll
need deep pockets. The
car in this story is for sale
in the Netherlands, with
an asking price of about
$400,000. At least you’ll
only need to do your right
leg at the gym.Failed venture creates luxe SUV
Military Grade
Despite tipping the scales at a
Jenny Craig-worrying 2700kg,
the V12 could haul the LM002 to
100km/h in 7.8sec and would go
on to a top speed of 210km/h –
even with the aerodynamics of
an apartment building88 january 2018 motormag.com.au