Best ever V10s: the 'genius' ten-pot in the back of the Lamborghini Gallardo

You’d imagine Audi gets all the credit for dreaming up an entry level Lamborghini supercar powered by a V10. It’s genius thinking – create a more affordable, less intimidating gateway to owning a raging bull and preserve the sanctity of the V12 engine. Trust the Germans to cook up that calibre of bulletproof logic. Except they didn’t. This was an Italian plan as far back as the 1980s.

By 1987, a replacement for the V8 Jalpa was desperately needed. Lamborghini set to work on an all new supercar, with a wedgy body by Marcello Gandini, pop up headlights, scissor doors, a targa roof – they even spent some time wondering how humans might fit inside. Confidence in the ‘P140’ was so high the company spent a fortune concocting a new engine, a 4.0-litre 365bhp V10. But just as it was being readied to poop the Ferrari F355’s party... Lamborghini got cold feet and shelved the entire project.

But it wasn’t all to waste. Italdesign built a curvier concept car around a P140 chassis and called it the Cala. That caught the eye of the Volkswagen Group at the 1995 Geneva Motor Show, and when the German company took control of Sant’Agata in 1998, work began on realising that V10 dream.

To be fair to Volkswagen, it really stuck the landing in the end. The Gallardo was – is – gorgeously proportioned. Yes, some found it too sensible, with its normal doors, its four wheel drive, its Audi A8 satnav. But the melodic even-firing V10 was an instant hit, an expensive sounding, torque rich delight that was developing 500 horsepower at a time when the equivalent Ferrari 360 had 400. Then 520, in time for the Spyder, with shorter gearing too.

That didn’t stop Lamborghini binning it all for the LP560 facelift, introducing a new 5.2-litre V10 with a more offbeat uneven firing sequence. Unlike the smaller all-Italian engine this was a much more Audi influenced bit of kit, going on to see service in the R8 as well as endless special editions of later Gallardos.

The loss of five into one exhaust manifolds means that, to the real V10 connoisseurs, the noise wasn’t quite as nape prickling as the early cars, but it didn’t hurt sales one bit. Over 14,000 Gallardos were built over the car’s nine year life, making it the most successful Lambo ever at the time and vindicating that blueprint for a 10 pot ‘My First Lambo’ that spawned over two decades earlier.

Lamborghini Gallardo 5.0 Spyder

Price new (2006): £136,540
Price now: £60,000
Engine: 4,961cc V10, 520bhp @ 7,800rpm, 376Ib ft @ 4,500
Transmission: 6spd automated manual, AWD
Performance: 0-62mph in 4.2secs, 197mph
Weight: 1,450kg (dry)

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood & Alex Tapley