Car Lust–Lamborghini LM002
The Lamborghini LM002 is just about the only vehicle on Earth with the ability to make the military Humvee look wimpy. Yes, the Humvee can be ordered with armor, a swiveling minigun or grenade launcher, a natty camo paint job, and all kinds of other high-tech weaponry, but all of those baubles pale in comparison to what the LM002 packs under the hood–the wildly exotic V-12 lifted directly from the Lamborghini Countach. The LM002 has your weapons of mass destruction right here–450 horsepower worth.
The LM002 was Lamborghini’s third attempt at a military off-road vehicle, following the unsuccessful Cheetah and LM001 prototypes. Only a few hundred LM002s were made, of which several were sold to the Saudi Arabian and Libyan militaries; Uday Hussein was one famous owner of a military LM002.
I have no idea why the exotic sports car manufacturer was interested in competing in this market in the first place–it’s not as if Ferrari was experimenting with, say, amphibious troop carriers, after all–but at least Lamborghini did it with style. The LM002 was a swaggering burly brute of a truck, as oversized, extravagant, and intimidating as its instant “Rambo Lambo” nickname would indicate. Its bulging lines were punctuated by scoops, bulges, and bars that announced its muscle to everybody within a 50-mile radius.
Despite its size and heft, the LM002 was also a screamer. The howling V-12 easily overcame the truck’s sneering disregard for aerodynamics, pushing the LM002 up to 130 mph–or 110 mph in sand.
The LM002 never made a splash as a military vehicle, probably at least in part because maintaining a complex V-12 in desert warfare conditions sounded like a recipe for disaster, but it certainly made an impact on my adolescent imagination. I’m not sure why it’s necessary to have a brutish off-road military truck with a 450-horsepower V-12, but I do know that it’s deeply cool.
Imagine infiltrating into Libya and being confronted with this snarling menace. Why even bother resisting? Fleeing, at least in anything short of a Learjet, would be futile. I have a feeling that if James Bond, equipped with a set of rocket boots or some other technological gimcrackery, had been pursued by a LM002, he would have been captured quickly and in an anti-climactic fashion.
These photos are of an LM002 I spotted at a recent Italian car convention. Even surrounded by priceless low-slung Italian sports cars, the LM002 was somehow the most exotic and intoxicating of the group.
–Chris H.