RE: [VintageLambo] The Gallardo

Did you formulate an opinion on the styling? To me, the tail lights are quite bland, just filling a hole with an obvious shape.I"m not crazy about the way they spill over the top, either. The vents just forward of the tail lights seem unecessarily busy. They"re too closely spaced to do any real venting and probably could have been scrubbed. For some reason Donkerwolke is convinced that sharp edge, rectilinear shapes are suddenly classically attractive even though 100 years of automotive styling has proved otherwise (if squares were beautiful, the cars of the 80"s would be taking all the trophies at Pebble Beach instead of Ferrari TRs and Jag XK120s). He also forgot that one of the key elements to a sexy shape is a tight squeeze between the forward wheel arch and the hood line, one reason the Honda S2000 and Mazda RX-8 look so aggresive at the front. This car has lots of clearance and hence everything forward of the doors looks chunky. The windshield base is pretty far forward, which makes the greenhouse look like it"s overtaking the front axle (cab-forward, it"s called). This car might look a little bit better with a more upright windscreen that meets the body further back. The squared-off double-lip wheel arch has been waaaay overdone by the industry since it was introduced on the Audi TT. It looks pretty hackneyed on this car (why should a Lamborghini copy other"s design elements?). If it were mine to design, I would have put in more curves as on the Murcielago with fewer edges, run the belt line lower in the back with more taper so the rear wheel wasn"t floating in a sea of bodywork, and tapered the belt line lower in the front so the front wheel also looked larger in relation to the body. As it is, the car probably works great in a wind tunnel, but contrary to popular notion wind tunnels do not generally sculpt beautiful cars. With active aero elements you can make a car settle down at speed and still have a pretty shape. AR