As all eyes in the motoring world turn to the golden shores of California for Monterey Car Week, it is San Marino’s own Eccentrica who are one of the first to show their latest creation to the world, and it sets this non-stop, car-reveal-heavy week off with a bang. The V12 Roadster is the second act from founder Emanuel Colombini, a Lamborghini collector who clearly decided that "restomod" wasn't a strong enough word for what he had in mind.
Where the original Eccentrica V12 rebuilt the first-series Diablo from over 3,500 bespoke components, the Roadster goes further still, stripping away the roof and, with it, any remaining barrier between driver and machine. "No roof. No filter. Nothing between you and the machine," is how Colombini puts it, and from what we can see in the reveal images, combined with the incredible performance figures, we see where he’s coming from.
That story starts with a re-engineered 5.7-litre naturally aspirated V12, producing 550 horsepower and an impressive 600 Nm of torque. That, combined with a six-speed gated manual that will delight anyone who still believes a supercar should require some input from the driver. It'll hit 60 mph in just 3.8 seconds, and keep pulling to 208 mph, surpassing the original Diablo’s top speed figure by 5 mph, which was, back in 1996, the first production Lamborghini to break the 200-mph mark.
The Roadster's design is created in partnership with Milan-based design studio Borromeo De Silva, while the body comprises of a mixture of steel and carbon fibre, with widened and recalibrated features which remain unmistakably Diablo in silhouette. Eccentrica’s team of experts, led by Maurizio Reggiani, former Chief Technical Officer of Lamborghini and the architect of the Murciélago, Gallardo, Aventador, and Huracán, not a small name to have signing off on your aerodynamics, particularly when the brief involves keeping an open cabin composed at speed rather than turning it into a wind tunnel with seats. Inside, Connolly leather and Alcantara meet anodized trim and exposed carbon, each car individually configured with its owner, all likely to be wilder than the next. A mere nineteen examples will be created and will undoubtably be spread around the world.
Take a 1990s icon, hand it to the people who defined the following three decades of Lamborghini design, then let the sun in. The Diablo was always a car people fell for on poster walls, and the V12 Roadster feels like another version of that same fantasy, now with modern technology, innovation and style. To do that once is impressive, but nineteen times over, with every one bespoke to the client’s wildest dreams is something truly special. If you’re lucky enough to be soaking in the atmosphere at Monterey this week, keep your eyes out for Eccentrica, there’s a good chance you’ll hear them before you see them.
