Last week at The Quail, Lamborghini rolled out its most powerful road-legal vehicle ever, the Fenomeno. Built to commemorate two decades of Sant’Agata’s Centro Stile division, the Fenomeno is a “few-off,” in that only 29 will be produced. But its aggressive, angular shape actually hearkens back to a project the company has kept hidden from the public—a “sculpture car,” in the words of Lamborghini’s design chief Mitja Borkert—that has “defined the future of [its] design language.”
The Drive had an opportunity to speak to Borkert at the Monterey Car Week venue, where the chief designer offered plenty of insight behind Lamborghini’s latest creation—its most powerful road car ever, that unites a naturally aspirated V12 with three electric motors to total 1,065 horsepower. Borkert joined the automaker just before the creation of the futuristic Terzo Millennio concept in 2017, which was developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Borkert said the Terzo Millennio “served as an inspirational source for the Temerario,” Lamborghini’s replacement for the Huracán as its entry-level supercar, “with [its] Y shape signature, the hexagon side air intakes, [and] the rear shoulder.” But he told us the Fenomeno is based on this other, unseen “sculpture” produced after Stephan Winkelmann returned to lead the company in late 2020.
“This is not yet shared,” Borkert said when asked about this internal concept. “But the Fenomeno is based on those design principles. It is not yet decided if and how we want to show this design sculpture. Maybe we can show this in the future, but this is now a new starting point.”
At the same time, Borkert cautioned against singling out one specific car as the genesis of a theme or blueprint upon which all Lamborghini’s next work will follow.
“I want to underline that there’s always—when we have a new car like the Fenomeno—there’s always the question of the journalists or of the customers, ‘Is this the new design language?'” Borkert said. “And I will deny that because, as I said before, I want to kick my ass myself to always find something unexpected again. Whatever we will come up with in the future doesn’t necessarily have to have this language exactly. This language can be again, more sharp or can be more soft or whatever. We will see.”
So, if Lamborghini ever lets us have a peek at this secretive “sculpture car,” it’s quite possible that, by the time we do, the brand’s design ethos will have changed again. That’s all well and good, but we’d support getting that look eventually rather than never at all. Porsche has done an excellent job at offering a look into the studio with its Porsche Unseen initiative from a few years back, where we got to see the company’s designers reimagine the iconic Renndienst van as well as a theoretical road version of the Le Mans-winning 919 LMP1 prototype. We’ve also been treated to peeks at canceled Audi and BMW flagship supercars in recent years.
It’s good that Borkert wants to keep Lamborghini’s fans—as well as its own designers—on their toes, never resting on a singular visual identity that doesn’t push the envelope. Whether we love the result or not, Lamborghini’s identity is to continually surprise with the extreme, going back all the way to the days of the Miura and Countach.
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