The Lamborghini Diablo Was the Craziest Car of the 1990s

this is a 2001 Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 it is the ultimate final version of the Lamborghini Diablo which was quite simply the single craziest car of the 1990s and today I've borrowed this one from a viewer here in the Philadelphia area to show you exactly what I mean [Music] I'll start with some basics the Diablo first came out in the early 1990s as a successor to the Lamborghini Countach early models were raw and basic but the car evolved over time especially when out II bought Lamborghini in 1998 that's when I started development for this version the 6.0 which uses a 550 horsepower v12 does 0 to 60 in 3 and a half seconds and can reach 202 miles an hour that sounds pretty cool on paper but while some cars are all about 0 to 60 in tenths of a second and precise Nurburgring lap times this isn't a car you appreciate on paper this is a car you have to see to believe so today I'm going to take you on a tour and I'm going to show you all the weird things about this car and then I'm gonna get it out on the road and find out how the Lamborghini Diablo drives now to hear more about my Lamborghini Diablo experience and driving this car something I've always wanted to do since I was a kid click the link below for my column on autotrader.com slash oversteer I'll start by simply getting inside now the door motion is cool we'll get to that in a second but before we do let's look at the lock and unlock noises you press the little button on the key fob to lock it that's the lock noise unlock it and now it's unlocked now to get inside you push down on this little thing with the keyhole you pull up on the handle itself there we go now the door is up and that looks really cool unfortunately the next part doesn't look really cool that's actually getting inside yeah oh there we go now I'm in now when you get inside the very first thing you notice is there's not a lot of room to put your stuff for example there's no glove box instead later getting asked off with some creative storage solutions that only Lamborghini could for example there is a storage compartment behind the seats but you can't open it if the seats are in any reasonably comfortable position there's also a storage compartment on the doors which seems helpful but then it violently retracts every time you try and open it and bounces back into place and then there's my favorite compartment this one on the ceiling which can hold your sunglasses or your garage door opener but probably not both speaking of that center area on the ceiling you also notice up there a few other interesting things for example that's where the directional light is located you can point it wherever you need to see also up there as expected is the interior dome light what is it as expected is how you control the interior dome light you think it'd be a little button on the light but actually it's a button next to the parking light the rear fog light in the front fog light I guess Lambeau figured that it all lights up let's just throw it together in the center console of course that isn't the only strange button in the center console let's talk briefly about the door lock and unlock buttons one of them shows a picture of a door the other shows a picture of a door with a key which one is locked and which one is unlock that's up to you to figure out now moving up the center console we have a couple of other interesting things for example there are a couple of lights that you can turn on but they don't really do anything except maybe illuminate your shoulder the other interesting thing is that the seatbelts are both in the middle I guess that's what happens when you have scissor door and you can't really mount the seatbelts right over here there's no room for another interesting thing behind the seats to make the car more usable compared to the earlier Diablo model they've installed in this one coat hooks I have no idea why there's even one on the driver side I strongly suspect no one has ever used these coat hooks in the history of the Lamborghini Diablo but they're there but the coats aren't anywhere near the strangest thing on the top of the car that honor goes to the Sun visors now you turn the Sun visors over and there's a little warning label there like there is on all cars that learn to you that death or serious injury can occur except they misspelled Syria take a look at that and it wasn't just a small mistake one time they also misspelled serious on the passenger side visor so clearly they looked everything over before they finish this car and put it on the road but this isn't the only hilarious example of bad proof writing as it relates to the Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 in the middle you'll find a couple of buttons that up arrow a down arrow one marked auto and one-two-three-four light so we couldn't figure out what that was so we consulted the owners manual on page 77 it very clearly describes its suspension settings and it lists what each thing is number one soft setting number two medium settings number three also medium setting I don't know why you have two medium setting and number four it just says setting it doesn't get more Italian than that but all proofreading mistakes are forgiven when it comes to the center console because it also holds the coolest thing about this car that amazing gated shifter just look at it it's beautiful interestingly this guy is only a 5-speed manual that's a dogleg sector with Reverse where you probably expect first to be fortunately you'll never mistake first in reverse because Lamborghini has engineered a rather interesting reverse lockout in this car you actually have to turn the entire shift lever about halfway in order for it to go into reverse that is good thinking next we move on to the climate controls which have a couple of interesting quirks about them number one is the recirculating air button it shows air recirculated inside a car and that car is shaped like a Lamborghini Diablo that is cool attention to detail less attention to detail is the fact that when the climate controls are off they still show your previous setting maybe the climate you could have if you wanted to turn them on you can never really turn off the screen the climate controls that shows what temperature it could be now moving on to the gauge cluster it's pretty normal you get your speedometer you get your tag you got two fuel gauges for oil temperature water temperature but there's also a button that looks like a piece of suspension that's actually an axial lifting system hundra's been one of the very first cars not the first car that axial lifter push it and the front end rises ever so slightly so you can clear speed bumps another interesting thing on the gauge cluster you'll notice that there's no place for all the warring lights that turn signals the headlights and check engine light and all that stuff it turns out the dashboard is actually two levels and in between the two levels there's a tinted piece of plastic that includes all that stuff there's the turn signals and the lights and everything that you might expect the weird thing is why is it tinted you can't really see it and those are the important things that you really want to see but that's Lamborghini oh and one other interesting quirk I forgot to mention that would be the key and key fob I'll start with the key the interesting thing about the key is there's no hole in it so you can stick it on your keyring instead you wrap your key ring around the middle section I've never seen you like this before but the key fob is even stranger doesn't say Lamborghini doesn't have a bull on it instead it's this square thing with one single button and a lot of unused space and for some reason there's a bunch of silver stuff and a lot of numbers on it the this was keyless entry back in the 90s now around to the front trunk you open it with a little lever next to the steering wheel inside and it has a couple of interesting things my personal favorite is inside the Lamborghini branded pouch inside the Lamborghini branded toolkit you will find a Lamborghini branded boxer bulbs and fuses in any other car boxer bulbs and fuses would be worth about seven bucks but this one has the Lamborghini logo on it so I suspect it's more like 700 - other interesting things in the front trunk now a lot of cars and their trunks on their door jams have a little label that tells you the color code that the vehicle has and this one it's handwritten I've never seen that before I don't know why Lamborghini thought that would stand up to the test of time but actually it has pretty well nonetheless this car is a hand-written color code the other interesting thing is the car cover it's yellow it has a giant Lamborghini logo on it of course it does and one of the other interesting things about this car is the sheer amount of carbon fiber there's carbon fiber on the door sills carbon-fiber up and down the sides the entire center console is this beautiful carbon fiber and this was at a time when most cars didn't really have that much carbon fibre but the coolest carbon fiber piece is this thing the wing if you know the Diablo 6.0 you know most of them don't have wings but this one does it was a factory option and it cost almost five thousand dollars 15 years ago and since we're back here one of my favorite little features of the Diablo lifts up the hood which by the way is carbon fiber and you'll notice that on the engine printed there you have the Lamborghini logo the bowl it says v12 6.0 and it's Lamborghini written in their distinctive font and they have the firing order of the cylinders written there which I've always thought is so cool this is an incredible view they can't spell serious right but they can get all that stuff and I think that is probably more important now since we're outside up front we have one of the most interesting quirks of the entire Diablo 6.0 and that is its headlights now the earlier Diablo models had pop-up headlights but by the time the 6.0 came out Lamborghini was like pop-ups are too 90s we need a fixed headlight but at the time they were also spending a lot of resources parading the Murcielago which came out very soon after so they didn't want to put a lot of effort to designing their own headlight so they borrowed a headlight from the Nissan 300zx that's right the Lamborghini Diablo Italian v12 uses a Nissan 300zx headlight and here's the crazy thing you see this little carbon-fiber lip on the headlight you wonder why would that possibly be there it's because the headlights come from Nissan with the Nissan logo printed up here Lamborghini covers that up with this little carbon-fiber lip so you have your cool little carbon-fiber on your headlights of the Lamborghini well it's not to save weight and it's not functional instead it's to cover up the fact that they borrowed their headlight from the Nissan 300zx now since we're talking about lighting here's another interesting cork is the turn signal now the brake light gets its entire circle as you can tell but the turn signal share the circle with the reverse light the weird thing is the reverse light which is never on gets 2/3 of the circle and the turn signal which theoretically is on a lot gets only 1/3 makes no sense but Lamborghini so the Diablo has some cool features and some weird Italian characteristics and it also looks like nothing else on the road but now it's time to find out the most important thing how it drives all right we're going to drive the Diablo here what another interesting quirk I've just learned is that it requires you to push not only the clutch one you want to start it but also the brake you have to push both pedals in there are assert distance oh boy ok driving - this is interesting the pedals are very quick there's actually a lot of room for my leg but then the pedals are very close together the dead pedal area is just massive it takes about half of the of the pedal alright and pick this thing out see what happens nothing like a gated shifter just feel so good my interesting thing is you have an incredible view down here because the window curves downward and so you can see like all of the road on the other side of the road may go to the point this is a crazy view in this time sometimes you get in an exotic car and you don't really you don't really cut a tell you're in an exotic car when you're driving it down the road and this thing I look in the mirror there's the wing I look over here I got this crazy door thing these wide mirrors it is so cool again and the driving position is so it's hard this thing is very clearly an exotic car when you're sitting what a sound is nice I actually find the Murcielago to be a little bit tighter than I the only thing that I find a little tight is the pedal situation I actually have a lot of room for myself and I have a ton of room for my shoulder I feel okay you know I'm tall I'm six foot four whatever and I have some I feel pretty good in this thing with the exception of the pedals I have big feet in it and it's very tight in there yeah this thing comes a little too far over and rotted some Headroom but just up here there's actually quite a bit of headroom it surprised it getting it started getting stars action has a heart the clutch isn't it's heavy is some older exact Testarossa clutch is much heavier limit I like this the speedometer just sort of nonchalantly 40 60 80 it's like you give the new cares what 135 I mean I'd love to go 35 but I've no idea where to find it again summit the thing about the 6.0 is it is the end of the line and they created it after how he already bought the company so this time somehow he touches in it in the sense that they were like when I get a little it at any Lamborghini get away with stupid crazy stuff anymore we need to do some more reasonable thing but how do you not do that that I just feel like the coolest person in the world [Music] the ride is monstrously ours I'm even going over those crosswalks and stuff it's like all the modern cars have these abilities to do you push a button and then it makes it harsher or less harsh or whatever swings in one so that's the soft inner working off still maybe we should probably normal or possibly normal man this is so cool this is just a coolest you know it feels do you feel that engine when you accelerate you feel it you feel like shaking them some kind you know you like Porsches you go you look down you're going 100 you're like oh my god that's not the case in the Lamborghini Diablo you're well aware of how fast to go and that engine doesn't let you forget it it doesn't go between the gauges easy is the Ferrari shifters the forest reserve are smoother and what the Lambo chips are is sometimes it feels better because you feel like you're doing more work to like really like I'm driving this car you know yeah I mean the steering is very heavy but it's only it's like a purslane heavy it's not as precise as the modern exotic I mean four five eight is like next-level not even similar but it still handles really well I mean there's no body role learning like that you can just hear sitting at the line the car doesn't shake and Rumble like some old crappy car but you hear that motor I mean you're not in some exotic even in modern Lamborghini Huracan you're insulated from that motor at the stoplight it feels like an Audi in this thing you know what's back there all look at this a slight glow Wow the thing about this car that I really like the sensation of speed matches the actual speed when you really know it's not like Porsche we're like insulated do you think you're going fastest because you are going fast man it's just totally it's just injured just you start hearing that sound feeling everything this is the last of those exotic sort of supercars where you were part of the car and you have to sort of work to get there an hour you feel everything and after that everything became a little bit more neater some cars to let stick shifts but this is the last of those like really old-school high-performance driving experience it is not as precise or as fast it's something like a four five eight or a kind of something like that but it makes you happy in other ways that's the whole point of Leone's older car it is still modern car back you wouldn't think it's slow but it makes you very happy when you hear that and when you feel that when you shift those beers in a way that it's hard to equal in a modern car even if a modern car can do 0 to 60 a full second fast so that's the Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 the ultimate final iteration of the crazy Lamborghini Diablo which is now one of the coolest cars I've ever driven between it's crazy corks and features and its raw driving experience and it's ridiculous appearance there's no doubt that the Lamborghini Diablo was the craziest car of the 1990s modern Lamborghinis are a lot more practical and a lot more usable now but they're also a lot more sterile which is a word I would never use to describe this thing no light is located you can point it wherever you need to see or not see depending on whether it's working

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 6,066,630

Rating: 4.8050504 out of 5

Keywords: lamborghini diablo, lambo diablo, diablo, lambo, lamborghini, 1990s lamborghini, diablo 6.0, lamborghini diablo 6.0, doug demuro, demuro

Id: t0zOKlVEYSk

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2017