Why Lamborghini won’t restore your vintage supercar to mint condition

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Why Lamborghini won't restore your vintage supercar to mint condition

Dissimilar other workshops that deliver perfectly restored vehicles, Lamborghini'south own restoration workshop prefers to leave as much of the original imperfections intact. Its director Paolo Gabrielli explains the rationale.

11 Nov 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 eleven:19AM)

It might surprise y'all to learn that Lamborghini Polo Storico – the Italian carmaker's division in accuse of preserving, restoring, and maintaining its vintage vehicles – isn't in the business of perfection.

This is in spite of how a typical total restoration will accept around 18 months, and cost some €300,000 (S$449,000), which is money that could well be used to buy a brand new Aventador, Lamborghini's flagship supercar.

Even Polo Storico's current boss, Paolo Gabrielli, admits its services don't come up cheap, merely you know what they say about good things having a correspondingly high price.

Oddly enough, Gabrielli doesn't believe in perfection. Or at least, he has a slightly dissimilar agreement of the give-and-take. Perfection in imperfection, if you volition.

"[The machine] must be slightly imperfect, similar information technology was. My chore to yous every bit a customer is to bring back the auto as information technology was produced. If there are little defects that were present at the time, it'due south fine with me," he told CNA Luxury.

Paolo Gabrielli, Head of Lamborghini Polo Storico. (Photo: Lamborghini)

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"To make a 100-pct perfect machine, it's easy, but if you want a perfect car, information technology's not authentic. If your restored motorcar has perfect, perfect paint, you lot are making a simulated. It'southward about the little details that are not perfect. At the time, they were not and then precise on some details, considering information technology just didn't work similar that," he asserted.

To Gabrielli, the biggest sin adjacent to a botched restoration is 1 that'southward done too well, when a automobile emerges from the restoration process better than when it left the manufactory.

"To make a perfect car, it'due south piece of cake. There's no human being impact, nothing. To recreate those hand-made surfaces, it's much more hard. And that's the departure we make." – Paolo Gabrielli

Gabrielli cited the example of a car'due south owners' manual. Those reprinted by Polo Storico deliberately take the kept the various spelling and grammatical errors intact, fifty-fifty though they could easily accept been corrected. Technically 'wrong', but correct in the sense that it was originally delivered to customers that way.

Small Volume, Large VARIATIONS

To better understand Gabrielli'southward obsession with imperfection and authenticity, you have to look back at the way Lamborghini, and other small-book manufacturers in general, did things. Much of the work was washed by paw, and Lamborghini could afford to do and then mostly because product numbers were and so depression (information technology struggled to shift over 200 cars throughout much of the 1990s).

Adding to the complication, Gabrielli said, is how customers could make one-off requests to the factory to have a non-standard option put in while their car was beingness built.

"If y'all looked upwards the production sheets, it'southward crazy. From VIN i through v, yous'll observe the same characteristics, just possibly in between, number four has this little modification," he said.

And if that wasn't enough to practice someone'due south head in, one also has to consider the state of applied science when those cars were being designed. At that place were no modern CAD programs to ensure micrometric accurateness or modern mass-production methods to ensure consistency.

While mod car production is highly automatic, restoration is the consummate opposite, oft requiring enough of man labour. (Photo: Lamborghini)

Recalled Gabrielli with a pocket-sized chuckle, "When I started on this restoration project, I said yeah, I have all the proper technical drawings, I can do it. Just after, I constitute out the drawings were just an approximation."

"We later understood that the body was entirely shaped past manus and the panels were hammered out over a wooden mould. The first car using that mould is more or less perfect, but the fifth machine, the sixth car…" he trailed off, clucked his tongue and shrugged.

That's merely for the bodywork. We haven't fifty-fifty withal gotten to the components, which pose a similar, nonetheless entirely separate series of challenges for Gabrelli and his team at Polo Storico. The technical drawings are no aid there either, because again, those but contain full general ratios and measurements.

Need AND NO SUPPLY

Information technology's also not similar Gabrielli could go out and enquire a supplier to restart production for him either. In some cases, the sole supplier had long since gone out of business organization, or in some other cases, they had long since departed this mortal realm.

So, what Polo Storico did was to find a machine they knew was unmolested, locate the part in question and opposite-engineer it.

Then, equally with the bodywork, you have to account for small variances owing to their hand-congenital nature.

Said Gabrielli, "If you wait at the taillights of a Countach, I tin assure you there is no ane like the other. The supplier who made them did it all by hand, so there is no ane that is identical." "Information technology'due south a huge discussion with customers that happen on daily footing. They tell united states no, I don't want this, I paid a lot of coin and I want perfection. Every time it happens, we have to try and convince them and say no, this [imperfection] is the correct manner." – Paolo Gabrielli Simply edifice upwards the athenaeum lonely took most three years... and it's st

It sounds like insanity and would drive any reasonable person to drink, and more than so when y'all consider just gathering, archiving and preserving those documents in a climate-controlled vault and so digitalising them is a process that took almost 3 years. It's a "never-ending story" that's still ongoing, said Gabrielli.

What's even more insane is the lengths Polo Storico will become to in ensuring that a client who brings their machine in for restoration volition have it exactly the way it was when it left Sant'Agata, Bolognese all those years agone, small grapheme-building blemishes in tow.

Past looking upwardly a auto's production sheet and matching a component's individual serial number with that of the automobile's VIN, Polo Storico is able to tell which cars had exactly what imperfections.

That, Gabrielli says, sets Polo Storico apart from the numerous contained workshops that as well restore Lamborghinis, who perform the above processes based on judge VIN ranges and serial numbers.

That's too the part of the reason why Polo Storico's services are priced the way they are – ridiculous attending to detail, but more than importantly, with a man affect.

"To brand a perfect car, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. At that place's no human being touch, nil. To recreate those manus-made surfaces, it's much more difficult. And that'south the departure nosotros brand," said Gabrielli.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

When he says "human touch", he means that in the literal sense. Fifty-fifty today, the trunk panels of cars undergoing restoration at Polo Storico are still shaped by hand, as it ever was.

That said, homo hands and optics accept a machine to assist them. Using a 3D scanner, an image is taken of a 'model' automobile (unremarkably sourced from Lamborghini's ain customers), and then a custom algorithm tin predict what slight discrepancies might arise in the mould later on repeated utilize. A crease may not be as pronounced, for case.

However, while technology has made it such that absolute faithfulness to the way the automobile was built tin be observed, the fact of the matter is that coachbuilding (the process of forming car bodies that takes its name from the structure of horse-drawn carriages) is laborious and back-breaking.

No small wonder, then, that this process is still one that Gabrielli still has to outsource.

"If it's electrical or mechanical, it'south not a problem, my guys are gear up, but things like a handmade body, yous need xxx or 40 years of experience, and I'm working with many schools to create this knowledge," he said.

Nonetheless, as expected, information technology's not a task that attracts many teenage apprentices.

Well, that'due south non entirely accurate. According to Gabrielli, they do come, attracted by the glamour of working on vintage exotics and fuelled by the booming involvement in classic cars, but few finish their training.

"Since the beginning [of Polo Storico] four years ago, nosotros have had just three guys. Information technology's a pity, simply it is what it is. When they realise the job is low-tech, they have to apply their hands, they accept to physically hammer metal and and so on, they're gone," he sighed.

THE CUSTOMER IS Ever... Correct?

But while Gabrielli's quest for perfection in imperfection is relentless and obsessive, he does admit that sometimes, customers aren't as sold on the thought as he is.

"Say the car was produced with a funny combination – exterior in purple and interior in green. We take a Countach like that. Horrible to wait at, honestly, but it was similar that." – Paolo Gabrielli

"It'southward a huge discussion with customers that happen on daily footing. They tell us no, I don't want this, I paid a lot of coin and I want perfection. Every time it happens, nosotros take to try and convince them and say no, this [imperfection] is the correct way."

And if perchance they still aren't convinced, Gabrielli isn't afraid to turn them down. He said, "yep, for sure we can evangelize perfection to you, but that's non my job. It'southward not our task."

Just to underline how seriously Gabrielli and Polo Storico take actuality, he's often refused to modify a car from its original specifications.

"Say the car was produced with a funny combination – outside in royal and interior in green. We accept a Countach like that. Horrible to look at, honestly, only information technology was like that. The customer said I would similar to have the interior in white and I said no, I cannot do that. I have to respect the history of the car, it was how the car was produced. If you desire it in white, you can become information technology washed at an independent workshop, not me," he said.

The reason for that isn't, every bit you'd await, snobbery. The reason, said Gabrielli, is something far less emotional and far more than pragmatic.

"We are running a business, but it's i that's based on trust and professionalism in our approach. If we made compromises on that, it'due south finished."

It'due south this refusal to compromise that sees Polo Storico'south output being exceptionally depression. If you're afterwards a quick, cheap or 'perfect' chore, this isn't the identify for you. Since Polo Storico'southward inception in April 2016, it has restored just 98 cars, a result of all its completed projects being "of the highest quality, the best yous can observe on the market".

Given the lengths Gabrielli and Polo Storico will go to, that's entirely believable, even if said cars are a lilliputian crude around the edges... albeit intentionally so.

Why Lamborghini won’t restore your vintage supercar to mint condition

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