The Lamborghini Jarama Is Ugly, Rare, and Totally Unknown

a few weeks ago I brought you a video with a Lamborghini Espada and I called it one of the strangest Lamborghinis ever made and you agreed it was quite weird but it isn't the weirdest because that would be this the Lamborghini hirama allow me to set the stage it's 1970 and Lamborghini is making the Miura sports car already world famous for its gorgeous design then they come out with the Espada a v12 powered 4 seater now sing your Lamborghini what do you do next maybe make an entry-level model maybe a convertible no they decided to come out with another v12 four seater that would be this the hirama and it uses the exact same v12 as the Espada and it basically occupies the same position in the Lamborghini lineup except except for two things number one the hirama is far far stranger looking than the Espada and that's no easy feat because the Espada is rather strange looking number two the hirama is far rarer Lamborghini sold this car from 1970 to 1976 and they made just 328 examples over that time production was split into two models the GT and the GTS the GTS like this one were the earlier cars and they only made 176 of these now those loan numbers are probably because nobody wanted to buy it but I have to admit I've always kind of loved this car you know how some people are into fast sports cars and cool exotics and other people are into weird cars like the Isuzu via cross and the GMC Envoy XUV well the Irama is the via cross of the Lamborghini world that's often forgotten it's rarely mentioned and it's incredibly rare and I can't wait to show you around I should mention I borrowed this car from community classics here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates it's an exotic car dealership with some amazing inventory and an excellent staff they have some incredible cars just look at this place today I'm going to show you all of the quirks of the hirama and show you why this is truly the weirdest Lamborghini ever made then I'm gonna take it out of the road and drive it and then of course I'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the Kurama click the link below to go to autotrader.com slash oversteer where I've also compiled a list of the strangest Lamborghini currently listed for sale on auto trader now I know so far the hirama may seem similar to the Espada I reviewed just last week but this car is its own breed of insane and weird way more than that one so bear with me and I swear it'll be worth it I'm gonna start back here with maybe the most interesting quirk of the hirama and that is the fact that it isn't a hatchback it looks like one it is this steeply raked hatchback window it came at a time when hatchbacks were just trying to get popular and yet it has a trunk and when you open the trunk there's a little prop so that you can leave the trunk open the trunk is actually surprisingly big the thing I like best about the prop is that it's only on one side and so when the trunk is open it's kind of tilted to one side but this was the Italians in the 70s and they didn't really care now if you're trying to get into the trunk you have two options you can walk up to it and open it with one of the mini keys that come with this car more on that in a second or you can pop it down here and just pull this little handle and the trunk opens but most interesting thing about this handle take a look down there the handle has a lock on it in other words there are two ways to lock in the trunk close it on the outside and it's locked and you need a key to open it or you can lock it from the inside by locking the handle itself and then would-be thieves can't even try to get into the trunk by pulling the handle since the handle is locked I've never seen that in a car before next up the usual this car has rear seats and apparently I have become the person who has to climb into the rear seats of every uncomfortable car ever made with back seats and so here goes now it's worth noting that getting into the rear seats just starting the process is rather difficult there's no latch you just pull the seat forward and it moves forward instead you have to twist a little handle over and over and over to get it to go forward and then it just stops it stops at a 90 degree angle you can't get it any further forward than this so this is all you get and once it's in this position well good luck here goes yeah oh oh man I'm never getting out of here I'm gonna die in the back of a Lamborghini hirama you know now that I'm back here it's actually not so bad of course the front seat is all the way forward but it's actually relatively roomy and I have a ton of headroom I probably have four inches may have two inches between my head and the ceiling but just getting back here is the problem if the SI went further forward it wouldn't be such a big deal but because it doesn't this is pretty much a two-seat car with back seats that are just there to put stuff in now even though it's impossible to get into these back seats it's worth noting that Lamborghini fitted them with an ashtray because after all it was the 70s everybody smoked including the non-existent people who rode in the back of this car moving on to the door panel there are a couple of interesting things here number one is the interior door handle it's not just a little handle you pull instead it's this little leather line thing that you pull up and that gets you out of the car maybe more interesting is the window roller downer now these are power windows and they're mounted on the center console we'll get to those in a second but there's a little plug down here for something that looks like it would have been the crank as it turns out that was a redundant window control a tool came with the car you could stick in there and use to roll down the windows if the power windows failed and so speaking of that let's talk about these power window switches like I said they're mounted in the center console they're giant they're like 2 inches by 1 inch but the most interesting thing is they don't have a diagram of the window on them instead there's just an arrow pointing to which window they control you're supposed to figure out the rest now the fact that the power window switches are unlabeled is only the beginning of the unbelievable level of bizarre buttons and switches inside this car starting with the horn the horn is not in the middle instead there's just a Lamborghini logo there the bowl the horn is over on the side on the turn signal struck you push it in towards the steering wheel and that activates the horn the horn in this car is well it's rather interesting take a listen this car is one of the meanest exhaust mints in existence you'll hear it in just a second it's crazy I mean it has that crappy little horn it sounds like a music note it's ridiculous but that was true of a lot of Italian cars of the day also true of a lot of time cars of this time period there were ridiculous switches and like I said this car is no exception one of the craziest things about it is that most of the switches for this car are not in the center like virtually every other car instead they've fitted them between the steering wheel and the gauges it makes absolutely no sense but that's where virtually all of the switches to control most of the car functions are located and boy are they strange now your basic setup is this you get six switches separated into two banks with two little dials on either side of all six so there's six switches and four dials and on the far left you have the windshield wiper control in the middle you have the control for the headlights and on the right there is a button to turn on and off the lights in the gauge cluster and a lot of cars there's a dimmer but in this car is just a button push it there off push it and they're back on now on the left and right of those three switches there are two dials I have had this car on I have played with those dials I can't figure out what they do I've absolutely no purpose I really cannot figure it out in fact they are among five dials that I can't figure out what function they have moving over to the right there's another - one of them is a little button that looks like sort of a heating coil inside of a circle I feel like this is probably the rear defroster except this car doesn't have lines across the rear window so it can be defrosted more importantly when you put on that switch a little light comes on in the gauge cluster with the most cryptic diagram I have ever seen of anything in any car it looks like a saw with a tooth brush coming out of it and then there's some sort of can that spraying I have no idea what it does and then it's far from the only cryptic dial in the interior of this car on the right of that button with the heating coil there's another button and I don't even it looks like some sort of super dish look at that you can see the bowl there's a lid on it and then there's little steam rising from it I have no idea what that does when the car is on I push it and nothing happens perhaps it's just telling the car that you want some soup the other buttons and switches on that side of pretty self-explanatory on the left there's the air conditioning that controls the amount and on the right it controls the temperature and then there a fan button to turn on or off the fan and for the right of all of those buttons and switches you will find maybe the most bizarre dial in the entire car it's a little dial that's just sort of sitting out there with no explanation and on it it has a music clef and a music note now the radio is elsewhere it's not even in the center console I'll get to that in a minute because it's all so bizarre but this thing just sort of sits there and it does something with music I play around with it and it turns out that it changes we're in the car that you're hearing the music if you twist it all the way to the right it's on the passenger side or if you twist it all the way to the left the sound changes and it's coming out the speakers on the driver's side I've never seen any car that has a dial for this feature and yet this one does of course there's also another ashtray in the center which is no surprise and below that there's something that kind of sums up the production quality of these old Lamborghinis the climate control switches that sort of direct where the air goes you can tell that they are not straight in fact they're not even really closest right but it doesn't appear that they were moved from their original position look at that they sort of fit right into the leather which suggests that at the factory they were placed on there in this sort of odd configuration where one's a little higher than the other and one's a little crooked and Lamborghini stuck in that and said yeah that'll do and the that'll do philosophy moves on to the radio which is in the strangest place of any cars radio I've ever seen it's in the center and it's in the center console in between the two seats and that in itself isn't all that weird that's where the radio is in my Land Rover Defender but the strange thing about this is and the defender is facing up towards the seats in this car it's facing forward towards the windshield when you're sitting in the driver's seat facing forward you cannot see a single control on this radio you basically have to look up and then you can see the radio it actually would have made more sense that they had mounted the radio upside down so you could read like this but they didn't it's mounted right-side up so it's best read from over here pretty much it is one of the most bizarre radio placements I've ever seen you basically have to control the radio by feel and I'm not done with the weird buttons and weird placement of everything just yet now right above that strangely placed radio in between the window switches there's a little button just like the window switches with two arrows on it you push this button and nothing happens and I have no idea what it even could be only have to push me with the car on in the stereo on that I discover that it changes where the sound goes you push them up and it moves the stereo sound to the front you push the down arrow and it moves it to the back another interesting placement is the button for the windshield washers yes this car has windshield washers and there they are right there in front of the windshield in between the windshield wipers but the button placement is weird like I showed you the wipers are up on the left of the gauge cluster but the washers are in the middle next to the clock and despite all the cryptic labels and weird buttons in this car the windshield washers are labeled pressed four washers same for the hazard lights they're to the left of the dashboard and even though the symbol for hazard lights is universally recognized by everyone and this car has a lot of bizarre symbols Lamborghini skipped it instead it says emergency flashers upside down now there are a couple of other interesting quirks in this car beyond the weird buttons and switches one of which is the shifter now from the drivers position it just looks like a regular normal shifter but the cool thing about this shifter is there are little indentations on the top of this shifter from where you're supposed to put your fingers when you're actually shifting gears which I find to be kind of cool also interesting in this car is the glove box now this was supposed to be a practical Lamborghini and so it has a practical glove box open it right up you'll find that the glove box is actually twice as deep as the little glove box door would suggest and then you'll find a couple of weird quirks in the drivers footwell one of which is the parking brake I always found it interesting when the parking brake shares space with the drivers footwell it never makes for a comfortable experience but it's not so bad in this car and then on the left on the drivers footwell there's a light down there now there's often lights inside drivers foot wells on a lot of cars so that when you open the door you can see where your feet go but in this cart you can turn on and off that light manually so you can turn it on even if the door is closed and you just kind of want to stare at your shoes it's also nice to have that light down there for all those times that you have to go and work on your Lamborghini hirama and the wiring that is under the steering column but anyway back to those switches next to the gauge cluster now as I mentioned the second one on the Left controls the headlights and when you press the headlight switch this happens yep that's right when you turn on the headlights it has basically pop-up headlights but they don't pop up instead the covers for the headlights pop away so when you turn them on they go down and they come back up when you turn them off to reveal the car and its headlight list form there are very few cars that are like this but well this one is now since I'm outside the car a couple of other interesting things on the outside number one is the fuel door placement now if you look you can see it's right there on the c-pillar that's a little bit of an odd place to put it it's a little bit higher up than in most cars but that's not the strange thing about the field or the strange thing is that there's one on that side and then there's a fake one on this side that has no apparent function I have no idea why they bothered to put this little cutout on the other side of the car but I guess it's there for symmetry now you'll notice that the fuel door also locks and that's one of the most interesting things about the hirama specifically the fact that there are so many locks on this car I already showed you the one for the trunk handle on the inside and on the outside the glovebox and of course the engine starting there are four different keys that you get when you buy a hirama one for each function and each lock in the hirama so if you lose one you lose access to whatever that particular key controlled so it's not just keeping track of your ignition key you also have to keep track of three others if you want to access your trunk your fuel door and your glovebox also notable on the outside of this car the hirama shared its wheel design with the famed lamborghini miura although that's about the only thing it shared it's hard to believe these two cars came from the same company at the same time period because the hirama is so radically uglier with that weird short wheelbase and the faux hatchback look and that long rear overhang it must be the strangest looking Lamborghini of all time and if you asked a bystander to guess which brand made this car their very last guess ever would be Lamborghini unless of course they hear it because that's the best quirk or should I say feature of this car it sounds like it's qualifying for the MA every time you rev it up okay so those are all the weird quirks and features of the odd Lamborghini hirama and now it's time for yet another quirk which is simply getting behind the wheel and driving it with only 328 of these ever made in the entire world I strongly suspect I will be the only person driving a hirama today or this month all right time to drive to hirama the first thing you notice it is incredibly tight in here designed for little Italian men [Music] touching that wood steering wheel is so cool it's such a such an old-school thing first impression the clutch isn't as bad as I was expecting it's actually pretty decent oh and sound is wonderful and that's 4000 rpm [Applause] non power-steering makes it pretty heavy obviously it's not that fast no but it sounds so good it's so so good this is one of the better sounding cause I've heard the mirror is just ridiculously tiny it's mounted on the door it's only a circular it's only a little larger than a poker chip whose car feels tremendously surprisingly so we're on the highway that's a very smooth road of course but it's actually driving really well in it this their kidney meeting her Amma is a nice shape like this that actually feel acceptable to drive all the time I don't know if I really want to drive it all the time it's hard to overstate how tight it is in this cabin my knees and the steering wheel are having a battle right now and my knees are losing and the sound is so good I basically counteracts everything else that could be a problem including our Toyota's although it is really tight Wow god this thing sounds amazing even not in the terminal I mean just it's incredible how good it sounds and if you don't have to get really far into the Red Ranger or to hear that noise you start forgetting about how weird this car looks when you hear that unbelievable sound the steering is not I mean the steering is incredibly heavy it's a 55 miles an hour but it just feels so fast I mean the sound it's incredible it is comfortable though it's surprisingly comfortable in here the seats are nice and comfortable I have enough room in every other respect aside from my knees but I mean I've probably got 4 inches of headroom left before my my head it's the ceiling it has a lot of room and it's a nice comfortable seat it's got some really tight sport seat but what it does feel is it doesn't feel like it's jiggling or it's weirdly out of balance like some Italian cars from the old days some of those you just don't want to spend any time in this thing you could actually take on a long trip if you were about four inches shorter than me so that's the Lamborghini hirama experience this is the most bizarre-looking Lamborghini and when it went on sale in 1970 it was Lamborghinis second four seater car powered by the same v12 so it had no real purpose today these are going for I don't know maybe $200,000 but that's if you can find one and finding one is no easy feat I'm really glad I found this one and I got the chance to get acquainted with a Lamborghini that's a lot different than the ones we know and now it's time for the Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling you thought the Espada looked weird that was nothing I'm giving this only a three out of ten acceleration it does 0 to 60 in 6.9 seconds which gives it a 2 out of 10 and please remember acceleration is based on an objective scale based on zero-to-sixty time you can find a link to the scale in the description below handling is fine not great but decent enough and it gets a 5 out of 10 cool factor is debatable some people wouldn't consider this car cool and have no idea what it is but with that sound the insane rarity of these it easily earns an 8 out of 10 finally there's importance Lamborghini has made many important vehicles over the years but this isn't one of them in fact I suspect most people have never even heard of this before and it gets only a 6 out of 10 ring the total weekend scored 24 out of 51 less than the Espada which makes sense because it's a little worse next up or the daily category starting with features since we live in today I measure the cars by today's standards and the hirama is obviously low on features so it gets a 2 out of 10 comfort is generally good except the interior room is so lacking I simply can't give it better than a 4 out of 10 quality is certainly below average between the undoubtedly high cost to maintain this car and well did you see that interior stuff still it has some nice materials and it gets a 4 out of 10 next up is practicality where it's decidedly worse than the Espada the backseat is much less livable and the cargo area is smaller since it has a trunk and not a hatchback and it gets only a 3 out of 10 finally there's value these are ultra rare and they're still underperforming the classic Lamborghini market in general which should make for a high score but it's hard to imagine paying 200 grand for this thing it's right in the middle with a 6 out of 10 bringing the total daily score to a mere 19 out of 50 add it all up and the total dug score is 43 out of 100 which is among the worse then again it's old uncomfortable difficult to maintain and slow by modern standards but it's also rare and weird and I love it this is one of the early ones a hirama GT and they made only a hundred in some number that I forgotten Oh

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,563,784

Rating: 4.8501658 out of 5

Keywords: lamborghini jarama, jarama, lambo jarama, old lambo, rare lambo, weird lamborghini, strange lamborghini, lamborghini, 1970s lambo, 1970 lambo, 1970 lamborghini, doug demuro, demuro

Id: gH65wZfN62k

Length: 20min 41sec (1241 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Beasty_Billy]

That exhaust note is godly.

[u/aerospce]

I took a course in college called Human Factors that had to do with designing efficient and safe ways for humans to interact with machinery and vehicles. This would have been a perfect example of what not to do.

[u/SickFinga]

/u/Doug-DeMuro according to the parts catalog:

• The left dial is a rheostat to control windshield wipers speed

• The right dial is to control the back light for the guages

• The coil button is, like you guessed, rear window defroster

• The soup dish button is for the fog lights

[u/davisch75]

That car has to have the highest dichotomy between exterior looks and exhaust sound. Its like a cocaine yugo with a le mans exhaust sound

[u/Obi-Wan_Kannabis]

This car is Susan Boyle on wheels

[u/Michelanvalo]

Okay that radio placement is the most bizarre thing I've seen in a car.

But the headlight covers coming down are pretty awesome.

[u/philsebbens]

I think Doug should just stay in Dubai reviewing this dealership's inventory.

I actually like the looks of this car a lot more than the Espada, which looks like a Lamborghini designed Aston Martin Lagonda.

[u/Obi-Wan_Kannabis]

This car is shit, why would anyone buy this over the Espada, it's just a better version of this...

Then I heard that engine sound.

Now I want one.

[u/tobiascuypers]

By God if I heard that exhaust while driving, this car would be the last thing I would think it is coming from. It is Glorious. We need more bloopers at the end!

Also, Doug, is one of those dials maybe the dashboard light dimmers?