Lamborghini to Drop Manual Transmissions

Maurizio Reggiani shakes his head with regret. Without a word, Lamborghini's R&D director indicates that manual transmissions have no future in his company's cars. Only a tiny fraction of customers choose a stick shift for their Gallardo, and Lamborghini's new Aventador comes with a fully automated seven-speed single-clutch transmission, and no manual transmission. Just 1 to 2 percent of the cars rolling out of the company's small Sant'Agata Bolognese factory are equipped with three pedals, Reggiani says.

A manual transmission, explains the R&D director, is a break in the electronic chain of command that harmonizes absolutely everything that happens between engine combustion chamber and tire contact patch. The only way Lamborghini can guarantee soothing smoothness in city driving or back-thumpingly explosive acceleration on a winding road is for every system in the car to be interconnected. You can't rely on a driver to always shift gears without glitches, Reggiano says. But you can count on next year's replacement for the now-8-year-old Gallardo to come only with an automated transmission.

The Gallardo replacement, currently under development and rumored to be named Cabrera, may not be the next new Lamborghini. Reggiani says within the next few months, the company will make public its decision whether or not to produce the Sesto Elemento show car. Lamborghini is expected to commit to the construction of a tiny number of replicas of its 2010 Paris show concept, and the car will be strictly a track-day special.

According to Reggiani, some of the advanced carbon-fiber construction techniques showcased in the Sesto Elemento are nearing production feasibility. The car's central tub, for example, is made from a forged composite. Short strands of carbon-fiber randomly distributed through a blob of resin are squeezed and then briefly cooked in a heated die. Reggiani thinks this method of carbon-fiber construction is ready for application in the automotive field.

"The material costs more or less the same (as conventional carbon fiber)," he says. "The real difference is in manufacturing time." A complex part can be made in just five minutes, slower than stamping steel or aluminium, but much faster than current carbon-fiber construction methods. Aside from lightness, Reggiani says forged composites have other advantages. For example, the material can be drilled without developing the stress concentrations that always occur in a bored metal part.

But Lamborghini isn't concentrating only on the development of high-tech supercars of tomorrow. There's also a newfound focus on building today's models better.

Currently turning out just 1200 cars a year, the assembly line doesn't move at anywhere near Detroit pace. In fact, the workers at each station on the Gallardo and Aventador lines have one to two hours to complete their complex set of tasks. To make sure they get it right, Lamborghini has introduced a near-foolproof component delivery system, plus large touch screens at every station providing ready access to the appropriate chapter of the "How to Build A Lambo" manual.

A new system called cubing, recently introduced for the Aventador, improves body build accuracy. The name comes from the cubes of aluminum that are milled to create reference jigs that can hold complete sets of adjoining body parts, such as an entire nose, including hood, fenders, and headlights. Or an entire body side, including the door. Other quality-enhancing changes are small and simple, like the adoption of new leather-stitching needles in the trim shop. They have asymmetric points designed to pierce the leather in a way that compensates for the distorting effect of the twist in the stitching yarn. Is this starting to sound a little obsessive?

Maybe it's nothing more than coincidence, but Lamborghini's quality director, Holger Weichhaus, is German. So are the executives in charge of the purchasing and production readiness departments. Having masterminded ways to improve body build accuracy for the Aventador, Lamborghini's Germans are now bringing a more disciplined approach to the company's relationship with its suppliers. Today's Lamborghinis contain parts made by around 500 different companies that supply everything from body tooling to headlights. Some 70 to 80 percent of these suppliers already work for the Volkswagen Group, which, via Audi, is the ultimate owner of Lamborghini.

Making sure every single part is exactly as it should be before production begins takes time. A long time. "At the moment, we are working on cars for 2014," says purchasing boss Eike Poslednik. He can apparently scratch manual transmission parts off the list.

Goodwood Festival of Speed...Glorious Goodwood!!!

The Festival of Speed kicked off on Thursday with the second running of the Moving Motor Show where invited guests and lucky members of the public could get behind the wheels of the latest models from the major motor manufacturers and actually take them for a spin up Lord March’s famous hillclimb.

It’s a great opportunity for people to closely examine the cars and see and hear them running. Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, BMW, Chevrolet, Abarth, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Morgan, Alfa Romeo, Audi, Volvo, Seat, MG, Peugeot, Skoda, Toyota and Citroen all had stands and judging by the crowds, were probably glad they had. Folk also had chance to mooch about the many merchandise stalls and additional manufacturers stands on the infield, or take a free ride on the Honda big wheel which gave a spectacular birds eye view of the event.

Friday was the start of the Festival of Speed proper, this year themed “Racing Revolutions”. The featured marque was Jaguar and in celebration of 50 years of the iconic E Type, a huge tubular sculpture of an E Type was erected on the lawn in front of Goodwood House.

A flick through the programme and entry list showed that the cursor had moved a little forward this year with a greater emphasis on modern cars than previously. The Supercar class was absolutely bulging with exotica which included Ferrari’s 458, California and new four seater FF, the Koenigsegg Agera R, the hard core Hulme Can Am Spyder and Ariel Atom V8, the glitzy and unpronounceable Pagani Huayra, the whacky six wheeled Covini C6W, the understated McLaren MP4-12C and AMG SLS and the futuristic Citroen Survolt, plus the latest Lambos, Bugattis, Maseratis, Porsches, BMWs, Bentleys, Nobles, Teslas, Spykers, Alfas, Astons, Chevrolets, Corvettes and Jaguars. With two runs a day each, the drivers and their lucky passengers had a ball.

More moderns included the latest crop of Touring cars and Endurance racers. The 2011 Peugeot and Audi Le Mans racers looked fantastic and such are their aerodynamics that even driving slowly in the paddock, their undertrays acted like hoovers, sucking up the dirt and leaves off the ground and blowing it all out the back in a great cloud of dust. This was something innovator Jim Hall understood well back in 1970 when he built his Chaparral Chevrolet 2J which used a secondary snowmobile engine to suck air out from the underside of the car to stick it to the ground. This year it was demonstrated by it’s great driver, Vic Elford. Hall was also a pioneer of high winged cars, with his 1966 Chaparral 2E which was also at Goodwood. When the Formula One brigade tried to copy him, they made the wings too fragile and dangerous failures soon led to their ban.

Many of this year’s Formula One teams were out to play along with their star drivers. Red Bull’s Mark Webber, McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna from Lotus Renault, Ferrari’s Marc Gene, Nico Rosberg from Mercedes and Karun Chandhok from Team Lotus all signed hundred of autographs, had a good thrash and did a few burnouts and doughnuts. However, my vote for King of the smokey doughnuts was this year split between Kris Meeke in his red Mini WRC rally car and wild man Ken Block in his “Monster” Ford Fiesta gymkhana car. Both were really spectacular and wowed the crowds with their unbelievable car control. Also smoking up the place in red white and blue were the fabulous Red Arrows who performed three days running while on Sunday, the menacing Vulcan swooped low in the blue skies across Goodwood House.

On the infield, the GAS trick cycle and motorcycle displays were a big hit with the youngsters especially, while on track, ace motorcycle stunt rider Mattie Griffin tied his BMW in knots and ran rings around the marshals, while Terry Grant broke a new world record by driving his Nissan Juke the entire length of the hillclimb course on two wheels.

From the pre-war era, stand outs included a brace of fabulous supercharged rear engined Auto Unions and the 1939 Mercedes Benz W165 “Tripoli” car, driven by John Surtees.

Surtees, the only man to have won premier class world championships on two wheels and four, also had a ride on the ex Georg Meier 1939 TT winning BMW Kompressor to celebrate 100 years of the Isle of Man TT. Himself a six time TT winner, he was joined by 17 time TT winner John McGuiness, Ian Hutchinson, who in 2010 became the only man to win five TTs in a single week, Stuart Graham and many more TT winners and stars.

The highlight of the Festival was a celebration of 100 years of the Indianapolis 500, arguably the most famous race in the world. Lord March laid on a theatrical recreation of the build up to the start of an Indy 500 race with marching bands, cheerleaders, a fantastic array of Indy cars from throughout it’s history and fifteen Indianapolis 500 winning drivers, namely Bobby Unser, Al Unser Jnr, Johnny Rutherford, Emerson Fittipaldi, Arie Luyendyk, Parnelli Jones, Bobby Rahal, Eddie Cheever, Danny Sullivan, Gil de Ferran, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Kenny Brack, Dario Franchitti and fresh from this years win, Dan Wheldon. Rock legend Brian May belted out the music while multi coloured streamers were sent shooting high into the air as the order was given “Gentlemen, start your engines”. Just wonderful.

Sunday afternoon climaxed with the Top Ten Shootout when the weekend’s ten fastest cars in the competition class battled it out for overall honours. Dan Collins drove superbly in his 1981 Lotus Cosworth 88B to come out top dog with a time of 48.52 seconds, fending off the purpose built Toyota Celica Sprint Special of Johnny Milner who was 0.47 seconds behind. Michael Bartels in his glorious Maserati MC 12 FIA GT car was third with 49.09. Over on the more sedate Cartier Style et Luxe concours lawn, a 1951 Ferrari 340 America was judged winner.