Sant’Agata Bolognese

Welcome to ZA Car Show’s cooking channel. In today’s installment we’ll show you how to cook up a recipe for supercar craziness.  The method is simple: high-performance; low weight; lots of revs and a slick shifting manual transmission that shifts quicker than comparable dual-clutch setups. The recipe also comes from Lamborghini and is the vital ingredient in its Murciélago successor which is due out next year.

Lamborghini is renowned for its V12 engines, from the very first Lamborghini produced, and with the widely reported ‘death of the supercar’ it is refreshing to know that Lamborghini is pushing on focused on  petrol-driven aural delights and not (yet) concentrating too hard on hybrid and diesel technology.

It’s an all-new V12 power plant with a 6.5 liter displacement, output of 525 kW (700 hp) and maximum torque of 690 Newton meters but the crowning glory is its unique high performing transmission  which is unique in the competitive world of super sports cars. It’s press material calls it: “the world’s most emotional gearshift feel,” which is a load of bollocks because until the gearbox cries with you when it breaks, its just going to have to be content with being 50 percent quicker shifting from one gear to the next without the fancy dual clutches that have found loving homes in the majority of automatic-like cars these days.

The low shift times are enabled through the transmission’s particular design, known as ISR (Independent Shifting Rod). Instead of taking place in series, as with a conventional gearbox, shifting can occur virtually in parallel. While one shifting rod is moving out of one gear, the second shifting rod can already engage the next.

But in this recipe the crowning glory for this combination of ingredients also does not come at the price of weight with a combined mass for the V12 and transmission of 314kg – 235kg for the engine and 79kg for the transmission. Add this to something super-light like the Sesto Elemento and there is hope for the future of the petrol hypercar – WWAD*

Oh yes, in case you didn’t know, Sant’Agata Bolognese is the place where these Lamborghini engines and transmissions were developed and will be built. It just fitted so nicely with our recipe analogy don’t you think?

*WWAD — What Would Audi Do — time to share with Lamborghini again?