In the first 35 years of Lamborghini’s history, the company had more than half a dozen owners and spent many years being unprofitable. Despite this tumultuous environment, the cars wearing the raging bull were remarkably consistent: exotic, extraverted, and extremely high performance. The follow-up to the sensational, but aging, Countach, the Diablo emerged from this environment, but it was not obvious. Its gestation was waylaid by Chrysler’s 1987 acquisition of Lamborghini, which necessitated substantial rework to please the new management, but the resulting car was a sensation when it finally bowed in January 1990. Immediately identifiable as a Lamborghini, the Diablo offered 200 mph plus performance thanks to its electronically fuel-injected 5.7-liter four-valve evolution of the iconic Bizzarrini-designed V-12.

Automobili Lamborghini’s financial instability finally ended with Audi’s 1998 purchase of the company, and the new leadership wasted no time investing in the company’s product. Long-term, this meant an all-new smaller model, the Gallardo, and a replacement for the Diablo, the Murciélago. Short-term, this took the form of substantial upgrades to create the Diablo 6.0, the definitive and final variant of the model.

Despite the 6.0’s less than two-year production run at the end of the Diablo’s life, Audi made broad-reaching improvements. Nearly every body panel was restyled in carbon fiber (only the roof and doors remained metal), the chassis reinforced with carbon fiber inserts, and even the front suspension pick-up points moved to enlarge the pedal box. The headline was the 6.0-liter engine, which benefited from a lighter crankshaft, titanium connecting rods, higher compression ratio, and less restrictive exhaust. Combined with revised fuelinjection and variable intake valve timing which had been added for 1999, the new engine made an astounding 550 bhp. The suspension was revised and the tracks widened, topped off with new wheels that modernized the phone-dial theme first established by the Countach LP400S. The interior was upgraded with new seats and AC system, and extensive carbon fiber trim.

The resulting car drove and looked substantially better than early Diablos, even offering newfound visual refinement bordering on elegance, to the extent that one of the most aggressive production cars ever made can be called elegant. That impression is particularly strong in this example, which is finished in Grigio Antares and has no rear wing. It was delivered new on January 6, 2001, and has had an illustrious ownership history, most recently as part of one of the finest car collections in America, which it joined in 2021. Showing less than 7,000 miles when catalogued, the car is in superb order, a collector-grade example of a model that has all the ingredients for desirability: significant mechanical and cosmetic upgrades, rarity, and an exclusive production run.