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This is a silly car. It's EasyJet orange, it has a deeply stupid four-point racing harness when inertia-reel seat belts would have done, and its boot is so small that a small boot is just about the only thing that will fit into it.

It's only two-10ths of a second faster to 62mph than the 'standard' Gallardo, but costs around £26,000 more. For which Lamborghini has removed some stuff in return for an extra 9bhp. Wow, knock yourselves out, guys. At £2,888 per brake horsepower, this is a fiscal sleight-of-hand Gordon Brown himself would be proud of.

Why is it, then, that the Gallardo Superleggera is possibly the most ball-achingly desirable Lambo since the original Countach in 1974? Is it the promise of an extra, circuit-hardened edge, the thrill of 100 shaved kilograms? The lure of a tweaked ECU and twiddled intake manifold?

Or are we sufficiently simple-minded that some new aero bits, a carbon-fibre engine cover and go-faster stripes are enough? Whatever it is, even the presence of Alice Cooper eating a 'high-protein breakfast' at the table opposite can no longer detain us.

He may have swapped raising hell for raising goats, but we're here to find out if Lamborghini, Audi's ultra-high-performance skunk-works since 1998 and the company with a Diablo in the back catalogue, is still in touch with its dark side.

It's Friday morning rush hour in central Los Angeles. Not an ideal venue for a first encounter, but still very enlightening. There was a time, not all that long ago, when this would have been the fieriest baptism imaginable for a new Lamborghini.

LA's streets are laid out on a simple grid, but where they intersect can lead to heart-stopping Mexican stand-offs - often with actual Mexicans - and opportunism is the name of the game.

The Superleggera picks its way surprisingly easily through the sun-kissed metal soup. I've driven four Gallardos before now, but this is the first to feature a manual gearbox, rather than the 'E-gear' flappy paddle system. And it's good.