The Lamborghini Diablo VT Roadster Was a Crazy 1990s Supercar

this is a 1997 Lamborghini Diablo VT roadster and it is one of the craziest cars of the 1990s the whole thing is crazy from the looks to the driving experience to all of the weird quirks and features and today I'm going to review this Diablo roadster and show you what I mean I've borrowed this Diablo roadster from CNC motors which is an exotic car dealership here in Southern California that has everything and I mean everything for modern exotics two older ones like this too basically everything in between they have probably the most amazing showroom of any car dealership on earth and you can check them out by clicking the link in the description below now before I get into the Diablo roadster a little history Lamborghinis premier mid-engine sports car was the Miura throughout the 1960s in the 1970s and then it was the Countach throughout the late 1970s in the 1980s and then in the 1990s it was the Diablo but Lamborghini had never done a real convertible version of the Miura or the Countach so when they introduced this the removable roof Diablo roadster it was a pretty big deal now the Diablo came out back in 1991 in early Diablo models were all rear-wheel drive in 1993 Lambo added all-wheel drive and the roadster came soon after that all of the roadsters are all-wheel drive the roadster uses a 5.7 liter v12 with 485 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque and here's an incredible thing Lambo only made about 200 Diablo roadsters for the entire world now I've already reviewed the diablo 6.0 which was the final version of this car and some say the best but by the time the 6.0 came out volkswagen had already bought lamborghini and they were already starting to make this car more rational more reasonable this one from 1997 is still old-school and geenie so today I'm going to take you on a tour of this car and I'm going to show you all of its interesting quirks and features then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the Diablo roadster click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer where I've also rounded up a list of the best 1990s exotic cars currently listed for sale on auto trader all right I'm going to start the quicksand features of the Diablo with a rather odd one and that would be the key now at first glance this just looks like a fairly normal key for a car but it isn't that's because if you look closer you will realize there's no hole where you can stick it on a keyring now a lot of supercars have that so that you don't put it with your lesser car keys but this is different altogether this little middle section is supposed to wrap around a specific specially designed keyring that Lamborghini gives you when you buy one of these and then it is supposed to sit on your keyring like this with the key attached at the middle instead of on the top and that is one of the weirdest things you will ever see but that's how Lamborghini keys worked in like the 80s and 90s but anyway once we have the key out of the way we move on to simply getting into the Diablo and when you walk up to it you see the same problem you're doing so many supercars there's no door handle so how do you do it well you put your hand into this little piece at the top of the door and then with your thumb you push this little piece with the keyhole once it's unlocked and then that unlatches the door and from there you just lift it up and the doors open up like this scissor doors looking cool like a Lambo door should look and that's how you get into the Diablo now once you get in here this car is insane and I want to set the tone with just how bizarre this interior is by talking about the dome lights which you may think is fairly simple now the dome lights are between the seats and you can see there are three little switches on the dome light panel the one closest to the driver turns on the light closest to the driver seems pretty simple the one in the middle turns on the light on the passenger side again seems pretty simple but then there's a switch over on the passenger side and that switch moves around the passenger side dome light which is weird because it doesn't move around the driver's side dome light you can't move that one so you can only move the dome light on the passenger side and even then you can only move it like 3mm and what's that even gonna do oh I can't see anything all I moved in over three millimeters now I can see everything in here it makes absolutely no sense which is a theme you will see another excellent example of something in this interior that makes no sense is the climate vents now for one thing the climate vents are for tiny little circles located on the top of the dashboard which is weird and bizarre in itself but kind of par for the course for Italian cars from this era the part that makes no sense is you can see they have a little bull on them you press that to open the vent but then you can't actually aim it towards you if you want to aim it towards yourself you have to take the part with the bull on it turn it all the way upside down and then open it and then you can aim it towards yourself interesting oversight that you have to turn over the bowl but that's what you have to do and how about the airbag at some point during the production of this car airbags became mandatory in North America on the driver's side that meant a new steering wheel on the passenger side that meant this thing this giant black thing just kind of stuck on the dashboard that contains the airbag no attempt was made to try to integrate the airbag assembly into the existing dashboard instead Lambo is just like yet we'll stick that on there and that's all we're gonna do and so it was now next up from there we move on to the center control stack and specifically I want to move on to these ten rectangular buttons which are insane now for starters two of the buttons make absolutely no sense at first glance that would be the middle button on the top which has a dot on it and the button in the bottom right which has two arrows or big triangles I looked up in the owners manual what these do the big triangle button is the dashboard light dimmer you're supposed to press that and that will dim the dashboard lights up but the more interesting button is the one with the dot on it what does that do what turns out that's where the headlight control used to be then Lamborghini moved the headlight control over on to the turn signal stock like a lot of cars and so they were left with an extra button so what do they do with that button they put a dot on it and it doesn't do anything when you press it nothing happens it's a blank with a dot but anyway just because we can figure out what the remaining eight buttons do doesn't mean they aren't also insane because they are for instance the lock button and the unlock button are separate buttons there in itself is a little weird but the really weird part is they're not next to each other you have the lock button then the fuel door and then the unlock button which seems like a bit of a strange ergonomic decision my favorite though is the button in the lower left you press that to turn on the dome light now the coop has a dome light but this is the roadster with the removable roof it doesn't have a dome light so that button does nothing it's just a dome light button it doesn't turn on the ones in the middle it doesn't do anything it was just pulled directly from the coop it has no function now next we move further down the center control stack where you have these three switches at the bottom which are kind of strange now on the left and right obviously those control the power windows the one in the middle with the shock absorber has a surprising function that's the axial lifter if you push it up the front end of the car lifts off so that it can clear low driveways curbs that sort of thing that is common in exotic cars today but tremendously rare 22 years ago now when you press that axial lifter button down the other direction the car immediately goes down to its normal height very quickly to resume its high performance lowered and driving now next up to the left of those switches there you may have seen in a couple of camera shots that there is yet another plastic surround and inside of it there are a few other buttons one is square a couple are triangles so what does that do the answer is I don't know I looked it up in the owner's manual which is original to this car and it's not in there in fact the center console that the owner's manual shows looks very different than this one that group of buttons is not included now the murciélago also has this and if I remember correctly it changed like how fast the accelerator pedal responded or maybe it had to do with suspension stiffness but it is not explained in the owner's manual even though it's included in this car and obviously it's not explained in the center control stacks so when you look at it you're just kind of guessing and when you're in the center control stack of the Diablo the crazy doesn't end there next we're gonna move up to the climate controls and first off I love the fact that they've written climate control in this like 1980s clock or calculator font I have no idea why they chose to do that but they have and it looks ridiculous now none of that is the weirdest thing about the climate controls how about the fact that there is a button to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit Lamborghini did not want to make to climate control systems one for North America and one for the rest of the world so they just gave you this button and you can switch between at your will and something else I love on this subject if you're lowering the temperature in Fahrenheit and you get below 63 degrees it no longer reads the temperature it just says low which is actually fairly common for cars the interesting thing here is though that it leaves the F for Fahrenheit so actually it says loaf LOF whenever you're at the lowest possible climate setting which is strange now that probably means that if you're on the highest possible temperature it says high but I wanted to verify that so to do that I had to go through all the temperatures and I noticed something truly wonderful as you go through the temperatures they go up like this 63 64 66 68 70 72 73 75 77 79 81 and then high in other words they don't go up by one or two every time it's inconsistent I think they did this so that it would match the Celsius temperature since we have that button it can switch between but I just love that sometimes it goes up by one degree and sometimes by two that is so Lamborghini know next up another ridiculous detail of this car comes when you turn on the windshield wiper now it turns on like normal and goes across the windshield no problem the weird thing comes when you stop it because it stops the moment you turn off the labor on the wiper stock it just stops wherever it is so if you stop it and it's up it stays up if you stop it into the middle the windshield it stays the middle the windshield and so when you turn off the light in this car you have to carefully time it so that it stops down otherwise it blocks your visibility which is just fantastic Lamborghini design next up another piece of fantastic Lamborghini design comes on the Sun visors you drop the Sun visors down and you will notice that there's actually a part that's cut out and that's because when the Sun Visor is in the up position it's cut out to make room for the top latch since this car has the removable roof now fortunately Lamborghini thought of this problem and they give you a little visor extender section in leather that pulls out so that you can have the visor completely blocking the Sun that actually is good Lamborghini design and next we move on to interior storage of which there is none and I mean this sincerely this car has no glovebox instead it as that giant airbag thing there is no center console that opens you don't have any door panel storage because then it would fall out when you open the doors the only interior storage in this car is behind the passenger seat but the problem is the seat back for the passenger seat is fixed in place so if you want to access that storage you can't just tilt the passenger seat forward instead you have to move the entire thing all the way forward and only then can you get to your sole interior storage compartment in this car brilliant thinking and next I'm moving on to the gauge cluster for another amazing Diablo feat check this out the odometer is in kilometers so this car hasn't traveled twenty four thousand eight hundred and thirty five miles it's traveled that many kilometers even though it was sold new in the United States it was always going to be a US model they didn't convert the odometers into miles now you might be thinking well that's just a decision they made they didn't want to switch away from metric but the actual speedometer is in miles you can see the outer ring of the speedometer shows miles per hour so Lamborghini was willing to change the gauge cluster for that for us standards and for the UK but they didn't want to change the actual odometer away from kilometers their next step I want to move on to the outside of the Diablo and I want to start by discussing this cars styling which has always been one of my very favorites of any car ever made in history and right here you can see some of the reasons for one thing I always love these little air intakes in front of the rear wheels those combined with this air intake here that was flat on the top just made this car look so aggressive so mean so special but the thing that always really did it for me was this wheel arch here instead of just being circular and boring like all other cars it has this sort of angle to it and that to me just made this car look so aggressive so mean I really think it was the most aggressive crazy design of any 1990s car and I really think it looks like it's going about 200 miles an hour when it's just standing still this car has so much visual drama it's just amazing now back here speaking of the design you can see a little badge that reminds you this car was designed by Marcello Gandini who also designed some of the most famous supercars and sports cars in history and also the Volvo Tundra die yes the Volvo Tundra the lesser-known Tundra anyway interestingly that Gandini badge is only on the passenger side they didn't want to give Dandini too much credit so they just stuck one badge on shows the pastor side that was it that's all you get anyway next up another design trait that I absolutely love with this car you can easily see it from that angle just how low and wide and flat this car is it was just such an impressive incredible alien design and it was way ahead of what Ferrari was doing at the time when this car came out Ferrari was still building the Testarossa and when it came time for Ferrari to finally redesign the Testarossa they gave up they got out of the mid-engine game and they came out with the much more subtle and restrained 550 Maranello they went back to front engine cars Ferrari couldn't beat the insanity that was the Diablo now a couple of interesting things from this angle one you can see the giant wing which is basically the highest point on the entire car this big rear wing in the back and also something I found interesting about this car if you're a Diablo fan you know the Diablo logo it was the Lamborghini bull with the word Diablo written in this like very 90s font well it turns out the Diablo roadster actually had its own little badge it was that Diablo badge with the word roadster added below it in a completely different font and to make that badge especially useful Lamborghini placed it on the top of the rear decklid facing directly up towards the underside of the spoiler so you couldn't possibly see it if you were sitting behind this car in traffic since it wasn't pointing back but rather up you had to basically walk up to the car in order to see that badge and next time moving up to the front of the Diablo a couple of interesting things up here one of course is the pop-up headlights when the car is in its normal position the front end is just shaped completely like a wedge but you twist the end of the turn signal stalk and the pop-up headlights popped right up and then you have headlights of course if you twist the turn signal stock in the other direction the pop-up headlights go right back down and you go back to your wedge shape now one other interesting thing here I mentioned earlier you have one single windshield wiper that sweeps across the entire windshield but if you look closely you will see that that's not true you have one wiper assembly but actually there are two separate wipers on that assembly you have one larger one and one smaller one in order to wipe as much of the windshield as possible with one wiper arm and next we move on to the engine compartment but first I want to talk about getting into the engine compartment because this car has a rather ingenious little feature in that department now to unlatch the engine compartment you pull on this little latch in the driver's door jamb this is a pretty common place for the engine lashing cars with the engine in the back but the interesting thing here is that when you pull that latch the engine compartment automatically pops all the way open and that is a really good idea because it means you don't just unlatch it then you have to go back there and fumble around while the engine is hot and try to get it open instead it's automatically open for you some good design from Lamborghini and next with the engine cover popped open automatically we move into the engine compartment and you can just take a look at it this is one of the more beautiful modern car engines this giant 5.7 liter v12 you can see that two cylinder banks they say Lamborghini on both sides it's just a really really gorgeous very cool engine not too many cars look like this when you open up the engine cover I also have always loved the fact that Lamborghini prints the firing order on the engine this is something they absolutely don't have to do they just kind of add it there for traditions sake and it looks really really cool to see the firing order of the cylinders printed right there under Diablo and this bull that's mounted on there as well one of the most beautiful engines it really is and next up we move up to the front compartment which opens exactly how you'd expect it to there's a little latch and the drivers footwell you pull it and you get it to this position then you come under here there's a little latch and you open it right up and then you're in the front compartment which is a trunk in this car and actually a surprisingly to large one you could get a lot of stuff in here if you want to go on a weekend trip or even a road trip there's room for luggage now one interesting thing appears that you have another v12 up front yes I'm referring to the audio system the Alpine v12 DC straight they've named it that that's such a 90s thing to do name the audio system after a powerful engine to show how great it is I'm surprised it doesn't say turbo v12 ultra power or something like that now in addition to the front v12 in this car and you also add some other interesting stuff up here for example there are two little leather bags in the front trunk that are held in place with these leather straps one of the leather bags contains a flashlight that you can plug into the cigarette lighter just in case you want to illuminate the interior a little bit more or if you're trying to change a tire by the side of the road maybe you can shine it on what you're doing the other leather bag however has something even more unusual inside this yellow pouch there is a window winder this car has power windows and maybe there was some fear that you would get trapped so they give you a manual window winder what do you do with it well you can see on the driver's door panel there are two little circles covered up by little plugs I guess you would take one of these off and then manually unwind your window if the power1 isn't working and maybe if you can't get out to the door very odd and the other interesting item up here you have the owner's manual which comes in this beautiful leather pouch that simply has the Lamborghini Bull on it that is all that it needs to say you open that up and you can see here is the owners manual for the Diablo and when you open that up on one of the very early pages it specifically thanks you for choosing the Diablo and it says that this car offers unequaled technical solutions well that is certainly true some of the stuff I've talked about this video is definitely an unequaled technical solution I'm not sure that I would be touting that as an accomplishment but and finally this is a Diablo Roadster meaning that it is a convertible the top comes off and so we have to discuss the top now fans of my videos will know that when I review a convertible I always show the top going down and then going back up but in this video so far the top has stayed in place and it will continue to let me explain why first let me show you how you theoretically would remove the top alright you have this latch in the front on the driver side at the top of the windshield you undo that then you do the same thing over on the passenger side you undo this latch and then the front of the roof is unlatched then there are two more latches on the back of the roof you undo the one on the driver's side and then you undo the one on the passenger side and now theoretically the roof can be convertible except it's not exactly easy from here you see the roof doesn't like automatically slide back or tilt back like in some cars instead you have to remove the roof panel from its position with your hands and then you take it to the top of the engine cover which is where you store the roof when you have it off I am NOT making this up there's not enough room for the roof in the front trunk like basically every other car so instead you can see the top of the engine cover has little holes that line up with all of those latches you've just unlatched and you're supposed to put it down on here and it locks into place that's what's supposed to happen the reason I don't want to do that is because in a lot of these Diablo roadsters when you remove the roof and put it on the engine cover you end up damaging the engine cover because it's a painted surface and if you don't perfectly line it up you will scratch it and puts a terrible idea and a horrible design but that's what Lamborghini did for this car now one very interesting convertible top item with this car if it's on the top of the engine cover and you want to release it unlock it so you can put it back on the car there's a little green button between the seats you press and that unlocks the top locks on the engine compartment and then you can pull it off and you can see this green button is like encased in this shroud so you don't accidentally press it and unlock it while you're driving down the road and then it flies away which of course would be absolutely terrible and so those are the quirks and features of the 1997 Lamborghini Diablo VT roadster now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the Diablo Roadster first thing you notice when you're driving is just how low it feels it really really feels low even by supercar standards it feels like a very low car because you have this wedge shape in this glass that's out in front of you and everything just kind of pulls you down lower and also the side windows are sort of angled down so everything feels like a wedge shape pointed forward right at the ground I love sitting this car I just think this is one of the coolest looking cars that has ever existed in my childhood I felt that this was the car driving position is difficult but not as bad as the Countach I have a little bit more room and a little bit more room for my feet which is important and the pedals are offset but not all that much in fact I almost feel like they're more offset in the Murcielago which makes no sense ride is rough even going over a little pavement things you can tell the ride it's rough and the car doesn't quite have the tightness that the coupe does you can tell that but generally speaking this thing is just the coolest damn car on the road modern exotics Aventador you see those the other around they've been in pictures for 10 years whatever this feels now like a vintage special cool like few other cars I just think this is one of the coolest looking cars that has ever existed and it's look has only gotten better with time sound is not that crazy it wasn't back then crazy and same exhausts have only really become a thing in the last decade or so pretty stable on the highway not as bad as you might think given that it's an old Lambo you'd think it'd be like going all over the place or so the steering would be loose or something would be falling off truth is you don't hear any rattles or shakes even though the car is pretty rough and therefore pretty tight you don't hear much setting a stop like the idle is actually pretty good it doesn't feel anything of old Lambos and you think they're about to blow up at any given moment this doesn't really feel like that knee room is a challenge it's hard for me to get my knee around the steering wheel but it's not so impossible I've definitely been in cars that were tighter than this although they were mostly older than this one usually by the 90s most automakers that figure out how to get that a little bit better but Lambo was not among them you can see me count looking up and that's because the car is so low that you have to this if you're tall to just see the traffic light otherwise you're not able to it's faster than you might expect I'm actually kind of surprised you know because when you think of the Diablo now you kind of think of it as an older car and certainly sitting in here the interior elements are older it feels like more of an old-school Lamborghini but it's faster than I was expecting and it feels like it has a little bit more precision the steering that I was expecting I'm surprised by that it's 21 years old 22 years old now this is definitely not a modern or recent vehicle anymore I think the real fun in this car though doesn't come in the speed or the handling because obviously it will be dwarfed by more modern Lamborghinis that are cheaper the fun comes in the fact that this is rare that this is special this is unusual and this is starting to become kind of a well appreciated well enjoyed vintage Lamborghini and so that's the 1997 Lamborghini Diablo VT roadster the Diablo is one of my all-time favorite cars I loved everything about them and I especially liked early ones like this because of their ridiculous look and they're insane interiors and just the overall absurdity of the entire package and now it's time to give this Diablo a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the Diablo VT roadster is just so damn cool it's a hair short of perfect and it gets a 9 out of 10 acceleration 0 to 60 is 4.4 seconds and it gets a 7 out of 10 handling is good but not amazing by modern standards and it gets a 6 out of 10 fun factor is huge this car is fun to drive but also thrilling to just be in and it gets an 8 out of 10 finally cool factor in this car remains an easy way to shut down a car show just show up in one of these and everyone wants to come check it out it gets a 9 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 39 out of 50 next up are the daily categories it features the Diablo roadster doesn't have much and it gets a 2 out of 10 same deal with comfort it's pretty rough and it gets a 3 out of 10 quality is low these aren't very reliable and materials are inconsistent and it gets a 3 out of 10 finally value and these are surprisingly good values nice mirrors are a million bucks nice Countach Azhar over three hundred thousand so Diablos are deals for a hundred and fifty to two hundred fifty thousand and it gets a seven out of ten for a total daily score of 17 out of 50 add it up in the dug score is 56 out of 100 which places it exactly where you might expect the Diablo Roadster beats out the Countach but the roadster loses to the more advanced diablo 6.0 in the Murcielago and it ties the Ferrari f355 the Ferrari is a bit more fun to drive but it can't match the Diablos shock value [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,029,341

Rating: 4.8450317 out of 5

Keywords: lamborghini diablo, diablo roadster, diablo review, lamborghini diablo review, lamborghini diablo roadster, diablo vt, lamborghini diablo vt, diablo, lambo diablo, lambo review, lambo diablo review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: dd6n5CN29NQ

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/xtra_medium]

I’ll buy it, but you’ve gotta replace the missing climate control button and throw in some all-weather floor mats.

[u/MDA123]

Ahh, the last days of Italian engineering and quality control that can be summed up in a shrug emoji. The airbag hump is a classic "Eh, who gives a shit" move.

[u/StaniX]

I love how Lamborghini back in the day put all the effort into the powertrain and the styling while just going "Eh fuck it" for basically everything else.

[u/nukelauncher95]

The buttons that aren't listed in the owner's manual are for the adjustable suspension. Like Doug said, the Murcielago had the same system. I think it is an aftermarket system that Lamborghini installed at the factory. I could have sworn I've seen those same controls in tuner cars and race cars back in the day. Also, I'm 99% sure the windshield wipers are just broken.

[u/Bentley-Benz]

Doug, you scare the hell out of me driving these old supercars on tires that are old enough to buy cigarettes. Just because they have tread doesn't mean they won't explode at 85mph on the freeway and ruin your year.

[u/Bumpi_Boi]

I am assuming that GMC K5 Blazer in the background is next on your review list.

[u/[deleted]]

Still looks incredible. What a machine

[u/Michelanvalo]

/u/doug-demuro so do you bunk in the same car every night at CNC or do you move from car to car?

[u/zma924]

This is awesome! I was in Perris, CA for work when I saw CNC Motors just off the highway not too far from where I was. I stopped in there to look around. Staff are super cool and don’t care if you’re there to just look at expensive ass cars. They’ll even start some of them for you if you ask. Anyways I saw this Diablo sitting by a garage door not too far from the Saleen S7 Doug reviewed and wondered if Doug was gonna get the chance to review it. Glad he did!