When a Lamborghini press launch turned into a 25 hour fever dream

One of the staples of the motoring journalist’s life is the international press launch. Post-pandemic, these once legendarily lavish overseas events are just beginning to hit their stride again, albeit in a somewhat pale imitation of their pomp back in the ’90s and ’00s.

It’s good to have them back. Launches have always been the part of the job that makes me feel most connected to the industry. Driving the cars ahead of their general release and spending time with the brilliant people who design, engineer and develop them still carries the same excitement I felt when I first travelled overseas to drive a new car some 30 years ago.

Recently I flew to Italy to drive the Pininfarina Battista. The near-2000bhp EV supercar is very much a reflection of now, but the drive event itself was pleasingly old-school. For starters there was just me and one other journalist. I drove the car all morning, he drove it all afternoon. The format was informal but packed in all the things you want, starting with a reassuringly expensive hotel and a relaxed dinner to get to know the key personnel.

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It reminded me of the very first time I visited Italy to drive a new supercar – the Diablo Roadster. This was Lamborghini in the slightly shonky pre-Audi days. I was collected from the airport by a bearded man wearing blue overalls. His name was Valentino. Yes, him. After a tour of the factory and a quick pre-drive briefing by the legendary test driver, we – that’s to say myself and photographer Dom Fraser, each of us barely into our 20s – were waved off to spend an unchaperoned day blasting across the rural plains of Emilia-Romagna. Life has rarely been better.

Launches aren’t always so idyllic. Ironically, the most extreme launch I’ve done was also courtesy of Lamborghini, for the ’07 Gallardo Superleggera. Gus Gregory and I flew from Heathrow to Phoenix, Arizona, stepped off the plane and immediately took a car out to do a night shoot. After a jet lag-ruined ‘sleep’, we then drove it on a road route and tested it around Phoenix International Raceway, then headed straight back to the airport and flew home, the wheels of our Boeing leaving the runway barely 25 hours after they’d touched down the night before. The blag was an Italian Army bayonet engraved with a Lamborghini logo. Try explaining that to the airport security X-ray machine operator when you’re in a befuddled, sleep-deprived state.

The long-haul trips might seem like the glamour jobs, but the short-haul European launches often yield the most memorable drives, launches in southern Spain being amongst the best. Especially if they happened to be anywhere near Marbella or Malaga, because they inevitably featured a high-speed ascent of the A-397, or ‘the Ronda Road’ as most hacks know it.

This smooth, sinuous and apparently endless mountain road could have come straight from the coding labs at Polyphony Digital. I genuinely shudder to think about what we used to get up to, but back when I was young and foolish (as opposed to the older and slightly less foolish man I am today) these drives were fondly referred to as the Ronda GP.

The objective was simple: he who deliberately left the hotel or airport last would endeavour to reach the hilltop town of Ronda first. In truth it was never anything so reckless as a race (it was more like a speed hill-climb), but there was a very real belief that foreign speed limits were open to liberal interpretation. Especially if your surname was Meaden, Sutcliffe, English or Harris. Those were indeed the days.

Long-haul launches had their moments, too. Back in 1993, barely a year into my first full-time magazine job, I was led astray on the Ford Probe launch by then Car magazine writer Colin Goodwin. Col decided it would be a good idea to drive at double the posted speed limit for as much as possible of the 200-mile run through the wilderness from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley. Challenge accepted, we got the drop on the rest of the UK press contingent (most of whom were notably driving red cars) and committed to thoroughly test the performance of our car, pausing only to stretch our legs and swap seats at halfway.

Funnily enough we were the first crew to arrive at our hotel, so waited in the car park for our fellow UK hacks to appear. And waited. And waited. Some hours later, Goodwin and I having long since parked our own Probe (also red…) and retired to the bar, our ashen-faced compatriots walked in and regaled us with tales of an attempted citizen’s arrest by an irate gun-toting pickup driver. Someone from Ford mentioned a Highway Patrol roadblock. ‘That’s weird,’ we said, having not seen anything untoward. They never did apprehend the culprits…

This story was first featured in evo issue 312.