Lamborghini Has ‘Big Footsteps’ To Follow As It Looks To The Future

Terzo Millennio: A glimpse at things to come? Image: Lamborghini

Lamborghini is one of those companies that built its reputation churning out bedroom poster cars, the kind of machines the fledgling car fanatics plaster their walls with and swoon over whenever they catch a glimpse of one on the street. From the Miura to the Aventador, its cars have always commanded your full attention.

But now, the firm is preparing to evolve its design language as it begins to adopt hybrid and electric powertrains in place of its traditional V10 engine. And, as changes begin appearing across the board, its designers know they have some “big footsteps” to follow.

“A Lamborghini is always recognizable,” says Mitja Borkert, head of design at the Italian firm. And this is something he doesn’t want to change.

Elements like the cars’ silhouettes and sharply-angled windows are all things that help identify a Lamborghini from the crowd. But so too is the V10 engine at the cars’ heart.

Now, though, as emissions regulations herald the end of such power plants, how will Lamborghini evolve its styling to reflect the change?

Lamborghini’s Mitja Borkert in his special car designing chair. Photo: Lamborghini

“I think an example that we gave is the Terzo Millennio,” he says. “For me, talking about Terzo Millennio you can see quite well, in terms of architecture, what you are able to change on such cars.”

With that electrically-powered concept [pictured at the top of the page], Borkert and his team were able to use areas that would traditionally be reserved for internal combustion essentials like the air intake, engine bay and exhaust sections to create more “extreme” styling.

Borkert explains: “In the future, if you don’t have a muffler, if you don’t have an exhaust pipe, if you don’t have all these components then you can use [the space] with accelerating shapes, you can use them for air channels.”

This would, effectively, give the designers at Lamborghini a blank slate with which to design whatever whacky concepts they can dream up, a practice that Lamborghini has never shied away from in the past.

All Lamborghinis should look as bonkers as this, at least. Image: Lamborghini

But as a designer, how does Borkert feel about his new found freedom?

“I like, let’s say, all of these regulations and challenges,” he says. “Because if everything would be free, it would be like if you had a car race with no rules. So I like it because you need to be smart and you need to think about how to solve these problems.

“For me, this is the very exciting part of car design.”

He describes such regulations as the “salt in the soup of car design.”

But while one set of regulations may be on its way out, new challenges are coming to Lamborghini’s design studio. An influx of sensors, technologies and new features will soon be required on Borkert’s cars, and this is a new set of problems that he is looking forward to overcoming.

“This is for sure a new challenge for us designers,” he says. “But we are paid for our creativity to solve these things.

“So I wouldn’t say that I am happier, but I like to take on these challenges. Because otherwise, life would be too boring if you could just do what you want.”