Visiting the Lamborghini factory is the stuff of dreams. Building one of its iconic cars there is sheer fantasy fulfilment, writes Michael Taylor.
I'M LATE. Half an hour late for a date the rest of you will drool over.
It's not all my fault. I mean, I'm off to Lamborghini to flail spanners and pneumatic guns and other man-giggles with the artisans, craftsmen and assorted gods on the Gallardo production line. I just expected to be picked up in a limo, like the rest of them surely are.
The Gallardo production line only moves every 50 minutes. That means remembering a host of things to do over that 50-minute period and all in sequence. My head already hurts. And this isn't a normal Gallardo. It's not even the lightweight Superleggera. This is the next Gallardo; the Gallardo LP560-4. This white-shelled Lambo is different to every other car here, and not just because it will do 325km/h.
Its core architecture is completely new, lighter and stronger in all the right places. Both the front and rear suspensions bear little relationship to their predecessors. There's an extra tie rod at the rear, while the anti-roll bar is mounted up high, rather than down low. They are stiffer, stronger and more accurate.
That's because the engine is brand new. At least, it's brand new to Lamborghini. It debuted in the RS6 a few weeks ago and gives the LP560-4 the same 2.5kg/kW power-to-weight ratio as the Superleggera (down from 2.7 on the standard car). It helps that, at 1,500kg, it's 20kg lighter than the old car, but more grunt is the main result. There's now 552bhp (560PS - hence the name) of power at 8,000rpm and 540Nm of torque.
With faster gearshifts as well, it rips to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds and 200km/h in 11.8 seconds.
The old car's bugbear - its lack of torque at middle revs - has also been addressed.
As for the environment, while the EU's 120g/km of CO2 is a pipedream for Lamborghini, the new car has come a long way, largely thanks to direct injection and secondary air systems to swallow fuel vapour. It's down from 17L/100km to 14L/100km on the combined cycle and from 400g/km of CO2 to 327 - not exactly Prius territory, but can a Prius make these noises?
All of this technology is so new - even around here - that the car I'm destined to work on (chassis No ZHWGE54T89- LA07107) is only the third prototype through Sant'Agata - officially; it's the SOP (start of production) mule.
There's good and bad in that. The good is that it's an eye-popping insight into just how many seemingly tiny things have to converge to begin a car's life. The bad is that it's nigh-on impossible to create with a prototype, with hundreds of suppliers all dumping their own prototype parts upon us, before confirming them and switching to their own full production.
Back to the good, though, and at least I'm not the only one meandering around the plastic-wrapped bare shell wondering where everything goes. My new colleagues have more of an idea than I do, but they're still not completely convincing. I decide to keep a diary.
DAY ONE, STATION ONE: Fortunately for the latecomers (cough, cough), ours isn't the first Gallardo to line-in today. After tearing off the plastic, my first job is to wheel Zweegie - as I've christened the new car - into the first bay. Not hard, it's a couple of small push-pulls until its rig slots into the track.
The fuel tanks are one of the first things fitted, tucked up as they are behind the gills of the cabin, in front of where the engine will slot in tomorrow. This is my job. Well, partly.
At the back, the old car was a walk-in business. Not the new one. There are two horizontals to step over. Or under. Without more accurate advice, I try under. It works twice, but on the third go, my Lambo-issue overalls break open a new ventilation hole. Awkwardly. Right down there . . .
I cede the fuel tanks to the expert, who drops down into the engine bay. I could have done that.In the meantime, someone is busy attaching the steering rack. Universal relief washes over Station One's crew. All its bits have arrived and all its fundamental bits actually fit. They weren't expecting that.
DAY ONE, STATION TWO: I'm handed a yellow box attached to an electrical cable. Lots of buttons, lots of arrows. It controls the arms upon which the bodyshell is attached. Make yourself useful, son, and move the car. Grazie mille.
A flexed thumb, a gentle whir and over it goes - I've rolled my first Lamborghini.
And nobody yells at me. Damn, that was surreal.
This is the Station of the Unsung Heroes. It's here that they transplant the core, the entire nervous system of the Gallardo that nobody sees; the wiring harness. I've seen wiring harnesses before, but nothing like this. It's a complicated snaking, tributary-sprouting lump of a thing, bursting with bright colours and every shape of connecting clip you can imagine.
It's hard to imagine how this couldn't go wrong. It's a three-person job, standing around with kilometres of wiring draped over their shoulders. I ain't touching that.
A colleague is busy incorrectly fitting the fat pipe between the fuel tanks (which he insists is a water pipe). It's not all his fault, though. The pipe is for the old Gallardo and is about a centimeter too short for this one.
The front diff goes in here, too. It's good, meaty work for manly men and I stick my hand up for the precisely torqued pneumatic gun. Yeah, baby. I'm on the line now. I'm a fully-fledged blue collar lineworker.
If the hardest job here is the wiring harness, the easiest is fitting the aluminium coolant pipe that has nothing to bolt to yet and just rattles around aimlessly for the next three stations. So I bung that in, too.
But it's here that we start to see the reasoning for this start of production (SOP) car. Lots of pipes aren't quite bent the right way, lots of hoses aren't long enough or are too long, other things don't fit and the parts bins are missing plenty of stuff.
When a car company upgrades, so does everybody else, and that includes the logistics guys, who thought some of the brackets would work better at Station Four, but neglected to tell the boys at Station Two, where they were traditionally bolted on. Much pointing of fingers, waving of arms and some frantic penmanship on the clipboards and colourful Italian.
DAY ONE, STATION THREE: It takes Lamborghini 115 hours to build a Gallardo. My car, Zweegie, will probably take another 50 or so, but Lamborghini's production bosses expect that will drop below 100 hours when it's on song. It's not on song today that's for sure: but it's not my fault. So far, they've analysed the pre-series car before ours, and it burped up 57 defective parts. "It's normal at this stage," said fabrication leader, Matteo Franchini. "We're comfortable that we don't have more than 10 big items we are discussing in our daily quality meetings."
The front driveshafts aren't a problem, though. Just as easy to fit as the old ones. There's a lot more work on the wiring harness. Again, I want nothing to do with it. And Lamborghini's production bosses seem pretty pleased with that attitude.
DAY ONE, LUNCHTIME: If the Lamborghini army marched on its stomach, they could march forever. The cafeteria is a thing of wonder, with a massive bar providing salads, five kinds of pasta, roasts, scaloppini, schnitzels, pizzas, deserts, soft drinks, beer and even the local lambrusco sparkling red wine.
Lunch is a big deal at Lamborghini and the food runs a close second to the canteen at Maserati, 20km away in Modena. Ferrari is spending squillions on its new staff canteen, too. It highlights a problem that Lambo's industrial director, Klaus-Peter Korner, has long bemoaned. A Lamborghini line worker is paid no more than a Fiat (or Ferrari) line worker.
"We would love to pay people for personal performance, but there is no structure to do it," he complained. "In Germany, we have the possibility to pay up to 15 per cent more to a line worker if we want. In Italy, when you have reached your level after two or three years, we are blocked from paying more. It's wrong."
So, in a rich and stable area with 4 per cent unemployment, one of the best ways to attract and keep a happy workforce is with high-quality, cheap food. And lots of it.
"When we pay about the same as Ferrari and Maserati, on the standard international metal workers contract, we need to make other areas more attractive to have the best people. When we want to have people motivated the pay is one thing, but only one thing."
DAY ONE, STATION FOUR: The suits are hovering around as the wiring harness gets more clips, gets plugs put into the right places to connect stuff to and they pluck them out through the interior's linings.
You can tell this is a pretty special car, because it's being escorted by two clipboard carriers from the quality department, another from R&D and a floating cast of logisticians, electricians and teachers from Lamborghini's training centre, where they've been building LP560-4 prototypes for months.
Each body on the line has had 40 hours of training on this car already, which explains why they have a basic understanding of where everything goes.
It's not so much a matter of getting all the bolts in place. It's more getting them done to the right torque and in the right sequence. With tolerances this tight, crank something two turns too far and the rest of a bracket's bolts might not go in at all.
No such problems for me, though. I've obviously impressed the bosses, because they've entrusted me with the heart and soul of the whole shebang. Yep, I've been handed the accelerator pedal.
My whole life has led up to this point. And yet, and yet. Touching the old car's beautifully crafted aluminium pedal, with its rocker arm and electric brushes, is to be saddened by the new. A one-piece plastic jobby, it's got a clip-on aluminium face and that's it. When I have fond memories of my own foot caressing the piece of art it's replacing, it brings me no joy to bolt this thing in.
DAY ONE, STATIONS FIVE AND SIX: A diminutive Italian takes three jumps to climb into the engine bay of the LP560. He's nearly able to stand up inside the bare shell of the cabin. And he won't let me bolt the handbrake on. Thoughts about small men and power trips spring to mind.
From here, it's lots of interior trimming, lots of heat shields; sound and vibration insulation tucked into places you didn't know the Gallardo even had.
The steering system is in, but resting on the floor. There are four big onboard computers already bolted to the cross-member behind the sill - and plenty of little ones. Tomorrow, Zweegie will start to look like a car.
DAY TWO, STATION SEVEN: Over behind the racks of nuts, bolts and hoses, they've been beavering away at pre-assembling suspensions. Again, it is different to the old car - and not just a little bit.
The morning's first job is also the day's most challenging; setting the new wishbones.
And the team is soon stumped. The front ones don't want to go in. The problem is the bottom rear bolt (on both sides) and it's defying all efforts and all tools. The training cove calms the fraying nerves to loosen the front bolts to finger tight, then the rear one barely accepts the air gun.
The rear wishbone is an easier job and, as ever, that wiring harness just keeps sprouting more attachments. The fuel system also gets the rest of its plumbing here and so does anything else that needs to attach itself to the engine, because the engine's coming next.
The headlights have also arrived. But there's a but. They're clearly marked "sample" and they don't quite line up with the brackets or the electrical system, which they kind of need.
Oh, and they've just slapped in the dash.
DAY TWO, STATION EIGHT: At Man's Hour the new engine cometh. And I cometh it. Yep, that's Yours Truly herding 560horses to be harnessed to their chariot. Besides the symbolism of bringing our new engine and gearbox, the little electrical delivery forklift looks like fun.
I have been shooed to one side while the heavy lifting is on. But I'm sneakier than that, diving in underneath to do my bit. No way I'm going to miss loading the engine and, with things slightly less streamlined, they look like they need all the help they can get.
There's lots of back-and-forward, lots of dropped driveshafts, lots of "No, no, no!" as newly positioned hoses and bits of that electric harness try to wedge themselves where they never used to. And then, just like that, its in.
Then it's down to oil lines to be connected to the dry sump system, fuel lines, ECUs and a hundred smaller bits.
I've also fitted the little metal trinket that opens the secondary exhaust flap when you've given it a bootful. A proud moment for the child in me.
DAY TWO, STATION NINE: The interior of this thing is like lasagne - every time you look, there are more layers going inside. But a bit of the steam has gone out now. It's already got its new engine, sharper gearbox, new suspension and better brakes. I mean, where's the fun?
I don't even get to flip it upside down anymore because it's arrived at the gantry that carries it from here until it's almost finished. There are seven new cradles on the production line and the whole thing was put in over 10 days. Still, I've helped out with the windscreen, though I'm not sure just how helpful I was.
DAY TWO, STATION 10: We're waiting for the tail lights, but they haven't arrived yet.
The new exhaust is here, though, with four pipes now instead of two and it almost fits, first time. They're still clambering about inside the thing, but levels of detail they're working with are just too, umm, fiddly for me to bother about.
DAY THREE, STATION 11: The lights have arrived, to highlight the wider-looking tail. Well, one of them has, anyway. It fits in easier than the front lights, but there's another issue.
The composite horizontal panel that sits on top of the haunches doesn't fit properly. It's not off the production tooling, so the screw holes don't match the brackets and even after adjusting all manner of things, there are a couple of gaping holes in the white bodywork. Anyone who has built flatpack furniture knows our frustration.
DAY THREE, STATION 12: Now, fitting wheels is something I can do. On my ear. Don't need to, though, because of the little hydraulic lifter that makes it almost a one-handed job. This is just too easy.
Given the ease and detail of what's going on (and the very limited stuff they'll let me actually do from here on in); I wander off for two stations, interviewing execs, drinking coffee, helping with the art. Lazing, basically. I popped back to help put the seats and the nose's plastic luggage bucket in, but that's it.
DAY THREE, LAST STATION: The full-timers are as eager as I am when Rocco takes my Zweegie into his care. He's the first man to fire up every single Gallardo, and the LP560-4 falls under his wing as well. Tough job.
This is the only place a car is allowed to run. And it's incredibly quiet. That's because all the exhaust is disappearing up a set of ducting and out the roof - to prevent Rocco from dying of respiratory failure and all we're left with is the valve-train whir. Good for Rocco, but I'm not happy.
Thankfully, though, he waves me over and I get to be the second man to light its fires. That's it though. No throttle blips, much less crazy drifting, but it still feels like something important.
Normally, there are a couple of test booths the car would run through, but we skip things like the ABS test and the paint-checking station. Zweegie is wheeled straight out to the Lamborghini courtyard - with me in it.
If the second firing felt important, the first drive feels special. Rocco fired it first, but I gave Zweegie its first 300 metres. Yep, from flat zero to 0.2km, the first to ever engage a gear, the first to turn the steering wheel, to dab the brakes.
And, in those 300 metres, I can tell you, the LP560-4 felt very, very good. This car is due to join a set of pre-production cars on test by the media in the next two months.
That means I'll be reunited with my own car. It also means complaints about rattles and the like may well be down to me.
In which case, I'll be having a few harsh words with various motoring hacks who dare disparage my Zweegie.