Boof, another Gallardo is deliberately slammed into a barrier. Pop, pop, pop, go the various airbags as the dummy thrashes around inside, yet the passenger cell remains untouched and the door opens normally. Impressive stuff, if a little painful to watch, as, one after another, a whole herd of Gallardos is written off.

Finally the controlled crashing stops and it's time to choose a Gallardo test car for the afternoon. Over the next two days we'll get to drive them on road and track, with a few hours on a skid pan thrown in.

Of course, we drove the Gallardo last month, but what I'm here to discover is whether the conventional, and cheaper, manual gearbox is superior to Lamborghini's E-Gear paddle-shift as fitted to the car we've already driven. So to bring myself up to speed with the new system I bag a silver Gallardo E-Gear for the afternoon.

The car looks terrific sitting outside the Mugello pits: low, squat, yet so purposeful as the engine heat shimmers off the body. It's a scorching 42deg C today in Rome so it's time to stop ogling the car's lines and clamber in to enjoy the chill of the air-conditioned cockpit.

evo is yet to drive a paddle-shift that really satisfies the way a conventional manual can, but I've been hearing good things about this one. There are two paddles residing behind the steering wheel, one for up, one for down, together with a reverse button on the dash.

Manoeuvring out of the car park, it soon becomes clear that the gearbox can swap quickly from reverse to first with either a prod of the button or a pull on a paddle.

It sounds obvious, but most other systems demand you select neutral in between, making them absurdly slow to park, for example, not to say intensely irritating to live with. Out on the road, each pull on the paddle sees another gear slot home, to the muffled accompaniment of gears being shuffled inside the gearbox casing. The sound only gets annoying when you pull to a stop and let the gearbox take you back to first again, rather than do it via the paddles.

There are three buttons on the transmission tunnel where the gearstick would normally reside, giving you the options of Auto, Winter and Sport modes. The first two are self-explanatory, while Sport quickens the change and raises the revs at which a higher gear is selected as you race for the red line. E-Gear automatically changes into a higher gear if you keep your foot planted and don't pull the paddle before the rev limit is reached. Only if you switch out the ESP will you knock into the rev limiter, forcing you to do the change yourself. The only time E-Gear struggles is when you try a quick getaway from standstill; then the system is forced to overcome the over-long first gear by slipping the clutch excessively.

After this impressive display, the manual is going to have to be good. But the first few shoves of the gearstick in the manual Gallardo I've just jumped into aren't that promising.

Unlike the Murciélago, whose gearstick goes directly into the gearbox, the lever in the Gallardo operates the gears (hiding behind the engine) via cables. And in the example we're currently driving the change is a bit sticky. It takes an extra pull or push to get the gear you want and sometimes you don't get a gear at all. If you've every tried a Lotus Elise you'll know what the manual Gallardo feels like. Combine that with a metal gate that restricts the last little push to get the gear home and the result is disappointing.

The final nail in the manual's coffin is the excessive leg movement needed to power the lightweight twin-plate clutch. Lamborghini hopes to have an updated clutch pedal mechanism in time for the start of rhd production in November.

We tried another manual just in case we'd got a duffer the first time - the change was slightly better but the excessive pedal travel remained.

On the evidence so far, if we had to choose between the two we'd opt for the paddle-shift over the manual. And that's a first. Rivals like Ferrari, Porsche and Aston should be very worried indeed.