We interrupt our usual carefully considered journalism to bring you this special report. For the next few pages, we shall depart from our regular format of informing car-savvy readers on how various vehicles rank against similarly priced and configured competition using meticulous scientific performance data backed by reasoned subjective impressions gleaned from 250-plus staff-years of sampling all things automotive. Frankly, after 250 years, we were ready for a vacation.
So what we have here is a daydream brought to life. It's everyone's happy-hour hallucination: What if you had a pile of money to blow on a go-fast four-wheeled toy? Damn the practical considerations, full dream ahead! Is it smarter to buy off the rack and write a single check for a ready-made supercar--the kind that swivels heads and gets parked right in front of the toniest trattorias? Or could it be more satisfying to express oneself and concoct a custom-tailored built-to-order monster capable of performing like a supercar without drawing as much attention and prompting passersby to whisper epithets about phallic compensation, gold-chain accessorizing, and Hair-Club-for-Men membership?
There's only one sure way to answer these deep philosophical questions: Drive like hell in one of each to see which makes you smile more.
We reckoned that if we were buying ready-to-wear, we'd pass by the obvious racks for something a bit wilder. Why not a Lamborghini, in this case the raging bull's newest 5.0-liter V-10-powered Gallardo? It's boutique-rare, raffish and striking from every angle, compact and maneuverable, and fortified with all-wheel drive, enormous brakes, wheels, tires, and all the right stuff for comfy cruising and angry hot lapping. Cost being no object here in Fantasyland, we popped for the paddle-shifted E-gear six-speed ($10,000), $2990 for the dude-check-me-out! pearl-yellow paint, and $1150 for a swanky custom two-tone interior. The tab: a mere $187,959.
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