Lamborgeenee Merchiellago

In the summer of 2002, former F1 driver and five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell took me for a few laps around Circuit Paul Ricard in a Bentley Speed 8. The lateral acceleration was so insane I felt like my brain fluid was about to leak out of my ears. Derek Bell was a Bentley brand ambassador at the time. A year later the Speed 8 won Le Mans. Toward evening we flew by helicopter from Le Castellet to Monaco for dinner – Derek, Benita von Maltzahn (then head of PR at Bentley) and me. Parked outside the restaurant: a Lamborghini Murciélago. It had only just hit the market.

Back then my main job was writing my column for GQ, which rarely had anything to do with cars. But that Lambo got under my skin, and since I knew the sports car maker belonged to the Volkswagen Group just like Bentley, I asked Benita, “Do they have one as a press car?” I was only joking. I couldn’t imagine they’d hand over a car worth nearly €230,000 to a lowly journalist such as myself. To my amazement she said: “Sure.” Cautiously I followed up: “You mean, I could actually get one?” Again: “Sure.” All I had to do was get in touch with Peter Oberndorfer, former racing driver, then responsible for press test cars at Audi in Ingolstadt.

I called him the very next day – and promptly got the promise that in a month’s time I could pick up a baby-blue Murciélago with Italian plates. I’d get to keep it for a week. Herr Oberndorfer, I wanted to say, tonight I’ll include you in my prayers.

From that moment on, my thoughts revolved exclusively around this hypercar. I even bought myself ankle-high suede racing shoes with thin soles. I pictured myself at the gas station, swinging the scissor door up and peeling out of the cockpit like Milan’s spaghetti king Paolo Barilla. With Italian plates no one would dare speak to me, but if someone did (“How fast?”, “How much does it cost?”) I’d just shrug: “Mi dispiace, solo parlo italiano.” I imagined deliberately joining the longest traffic jams, exposing myself to as many stares as possible for as long as possible. Little did I know that one guy in a Kia would turn to his passenger and say: “Look at that tacky mobster, late for his family gathering.”

Ingolstadt. The Lamborghini down in the garage. Sticking its massive rear in my face, menacing and seductive. “You fattened beast,” I muttered. I swear I was trembling. Even strapped in behind the wheel I couldn’t quite believe it – this car was practically mine for a whole week. My math teacher once told me I’d never amount to anything in life, that I wouldn’t even be able to buy half a stick of butter, since I couldn’t handle the simplest fractions. Today I ask myself: Who made it further in life? A: The guy who drives a Lambo because he can afford it? Or B: The guy who drives a Lambo even though he’ll never be able to afford one in a hundred years and still can’t do fractions? I lean toward B.  

The baby-blue bat wasn’t mine for even thirty minutes. On the autobahn to Munich, at 270 km/h, there was a sudden explosive bang. I flinched like a soldier in the trenches. The rearview mirror showed nothing but white smoke. The Lambo no longer responded to the throttle. I coasted onto the shoulder and got out. The smoke trailed for hundreds of meters. Total engine failure. I would have loved to see it from a following car – must have looked bombastic, like the old days of F1 when one delicate engine after another went up in smoke.

I pulled out my phone and called Herr Oberndorfer. Told him there was a problem, actually not a problem, the engine was toast, died in an instant, probably just a mush of aluminum and titanium. Silence. “Herr Oberndorfer?” “Impossible.” “But it’s true.” Nothing to be done, the Murciélago was hoisted onto a truck an hour later and hauled back to Ingolstadt. I rode along, ended up back in Oberndorfer’s office. He apologized, but such things happen even at the best racing teams, he said. Another Murciélago would be waiting for me two weeks down the line.

Those fourteen days felt like forever. The next one was yellow. Again that angry bark at ignition, an overture to the great twelve-cylinder opera. A couple of hours later the Austrian police pulled me over. License. Registration. I couldn’t find the papers. “Who owns this car?” “Press car from Lamborghini.” Anyone could say that. They checked whether it was reported stolen. Negative. They still weren’t satisfied. For some reason they couldn’t identify the registered owner – Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., Sant’Agata Bolognese. I suggested they call Peter Oberndorfer at Audi. Fine. I gave them the number. Then: “Grüß Gott, Herr Oberndorfer, this is the Austrian police.” (Oberndofer greeted them back in utter shock, as he later told me.) “We’ve got a Herr Molzer here driving a Lamborghini without papers. Where’s the registration?” (...)

→ Read the entire story in the new
rampstyle #36 »Beyond the Sea«!