Supercar owners tend to heed the adage of Indiana Jones when it comes to their precious exotics: [It`s not the years, honey-it`s the mileage." Hence the paradox that the very cars that are designed exclusively for the pleasure of driving tend to be the ones that get driven the least, instead being locked away in climate-controlled garages lest an excess of miles reduce their value.
Which is why this U.K.-registered Lamborghini Murciélago is a supremely elegant, and extremely orange, riposte to the fetishization of barely used supercars. When we were lucky enough to drive it recently, its odometer read just over 258,000 miles, but we`re told that total has gone up by another 2000 miles since. Continued use means that its record as the highest-mileage modern Lamborghini in the world is unlikely ever to be beaten.
Mortgaged to the Hilt
The Murciélago belongs to Simon George, co-owner of a U.K. [supercar experience" company called 6th Gear Experience. Although the car has acquired most of its mileage working as a high-class rental, George`s decision to purchase it predated and even inspired the creation of the business. George started out as a heating engineer and then used cheap credit to buy rental properties in his native Yorkshire. In 2004, he took out a new mortgage against his entire portfolio of properties to raise what was then the equivalent of about $50,000 to put down a deposit on a brand-new Murciélago.
[I`ve always lived life on the edge," he admitted. [And I always wanted a Lamborghini. The finance payments were about three grand a month-the car was £180,000 [the equivalent of about $320,000 at the time]-and I only had enough money put aside for about eight months. So I knew the car would have to earn its keep."
The easiest way to monetize his exotic asset was by renting it to a supercar-experience company, with George serving as instructor and sitting beside paying guests as they wailed on his pride and joy on British racetracks. After a couple of years of that, he set out on his own with business partner Andy Cummings. They formed 6th Gear Experience, with the Murciélago serving as the pride of their fleet. The business has since expanded to call itself the largest in the U.K., with 27 cars on its books.
For five years, the Murciélago worked harder than a New York City taxi, doing up to 90 events a year and being driven by dozens of different people at each. It also served as George`s daily driver, covering 600 miles a week commuting and traveling between event locations. Costs were predictably high. George reported that the Murciélago`s fuel economy peaks at 13 mpg on a gentle cruise-this on premium unleaded at the equivalent of $6 per gallon. Consumables have been consumed with predictable gusto: The Murciélago eats as many as 14 sets of tires every year at $1150 per quartet and requires new brake pads on a similar frequency. Brake rotors last about 20,000 miles, with a new set costing around $1300, but clutches have been the larger expense-the Murciélago is now on its eighth, and replacement requires removing the engine from the car. The engine and the gearbox are both original, but the V-12 has had three top-end rebuilds. George was the first owner to discover the Murciélago`s tendency to snap its camshaft ancillary drive pulley at high mileage-it has happened twice.
Then things got a whole lot more expensive. At a driving event in late 2012, a customer lost control of the Murciélago in wet conditions at the Chobham test track near London (also used by McLaren to shake down new cars).
[The back end let go, and the instructor sitting next to him just couldn`t catch it," George said. [The car ended up hitting a tree pretty much head on. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but the car was a proper mess, the roof was bent, the chassis was warped."
The decision to rebuild the car was made almost immediately. [It was heart over head," George admitted. But it then took four years and around $115,000 to get the Murciélago back on the road, and that was with preferential labor rates from the Lamborghini dealer in Manchester who`d originally sold it, and with some of 6th Gear`s mechanics doing unpaid overtime. [Everything`s expensive on one of these," George explained. [One of the priciest parts were the headlights-they`re £6000 [$7700] apiece, and I had to get two."
For more than four years, the Murciélago`s odometer stood still. But now, freshly rebuilt, it`s straight back into regular use. It has earned retirement from 6th Gear duties, but now it`s George`s regular ride again, frequently used for his 180-mile daily commute from Yorkshire to the English Midlands. He has bigger adventures planned, including a return to the Lamborghini factory at Sant`Agata later this year. That`s about a 2500-mile round trip.
But before that, and because we asked nicely, Car and Driver gets a turn.
Wear Points Revealed
We`ve been in high-mileage vehicles before, of course, but none like this. No sagging airport limousine or hard-working urban bus has ever been given such a comprehensive restoration. From 10 feet away, George`s Murciélago could pretty much pass for new. It sits on larger, later LP640 wheels, chosen to accommodate larger brakes, and has gained LED rear lights and an aftermarket exhaust, but otherwise it`s pretty much as it left the factory.
Getting closer reveals evidence of scars and surgery. The [V12 6.2L" badge that sits on the rear flank still bears the scratches it acquired in the crash. George admitted that, under its fresh coat of Arancio Atlas (orange) paint, the roof contains nearly as much filler as metal. But it`s the cabin that really tells the tale of a life lived hard. Beneath the scissor door, most of the MURCIÉLAGO legend embossed in the plastic sill protector has been worn down by the thousands of backsides that have slid over it, and some hard-to-find bits of interior trim have gone missing. But the most telling detail is the fuel-filler release button; most of the symbol is worn off by the hundreds of times the button has been pressed.
The check-engine light stays blazing on the dashboard even after the vast V-12 has whirred to life-probably the one thing the Lamborghini shares with almost every other 250,000-mile car on the planet-and the original adaptive dampers were impossible to rebuild, so George has replaced them with passive ones. Everything else is pretty much as we remember the Murciélago was when new, although 15 years of progress in supercar ergonomics have left the cabin feeling smaller and more cramped than we thought back then.
But there`s no unwelcome dilution of the driving experience. The more modern Lamborghinis might be more powerful and faster, but not in any road-relevant way, and none is more charismatic than the Murciélago. The V-12 is tractable from idle upward, as happy in its broad, brawny midrange as it is making attempts on the upper reaches of the tachometer. The combination of a rainy British day (of course) and winter tires meant the Lamborghini was struggling to find traction for all 572 horsepower, with the old-fashioned stability control stepping in like an insulted bouncer at the slightest hint of slip. Fortunately, conditions cleared enough to allow a couple of trips to the 7600-rpm redline, and a chance to confirm it still yields an entirely Lamborghini-appropriate wail when worked hard. Even driven gently, the Murciélago remains a hugely exciting car, especially with George`s decision to order this one with the gated manual transmission, which suits the car perfectly.
Sure, there are some additional foibles-some of the trim creaks, and the fold-down storage compartment in the roof is held shut with sticky tape. But it feels much less baggy than most cars do at half the mileage, and it stands as glorious proof that cars like this really should be used and used hard.
It Adds Up
George told us he has never worked out what he has spent on the Murciélago over the years, but he agreed to help us come up with an estimate. The unknown factor is depreciation; low-mileage Murciélagos are trading in the U.K. for more than they cost new, but the market for a quarter-million-mile version is obviously untested. George admitted that his car might be worth no more than its value in parts, not that he would ever butcher it-our conservative valuation of the equivalent of $77,000 is pretty much the worst-case scenario and would mean it has lost at least $154,000 in value since new. The biggest single expense is fuel: because the car averages 10 mpg overall including track use, the cost translates to about $162,000. Crash repairs cost around $115,000, 84 sets of tires have cost $97,400, servicing and engine rebuilds have cost an estimated $64,000, insurance has cost more than $19,000, and everything else, including British road taxes, adds about another $25,000. That`s a total of £498,000, or nearly $640,000.