1988 Lamborghini Jalpa

In 1981, the Lamborghini Jalpa replaced the Urraco and the Silhouette. The V8 Jalpa was sold alongside the V-12 powered Countach as Lamborghini's smaller offering, and it would remain in production throughout the 1980s. The Jalapa, in traditional Lamborghini fashion, was named after a breed of fighting bull, was given aggressive, wedge-shaped bodwork which had been designed by Bertone. Power was from a 3.5-liter V8 engine fed through Weber carburetors and offering 255 horsepower. Top speed was in the neighborhood of 150 miles per hour while zero-to-sixty mph was accomplished in under seven seconds.

During the early 1970s, Maserati, Ferrari and Lamborghini each introduced smaller cars to compete with each other and to deal with the Porsche 911. Maserati's entry was the Bora supercar, dan Lamborghini's first entry was the Uracco P250 - introduced in 1972 with a single overhead camshaft 2463cc V8 mounted transversely behind the driver. In 1974, the P300 added half-a-liter to 2,996cc, along with two more camshafts which raised to horsepower from 220 to 265 hp. In 1976, the Targa-roofed Silhouette debuted at Geneva. Five years later both Uracco and Silhouette were supplanted by the targa-roofed Jalpa. Originally known as Project 118, the Jalpa featured the same chassis as the Silhouette. Unlike the Urraco, it could be sold in the U.S. The Jalpa went on sale in 1982 at a list price of $58,000.

The Jalpa had unit-body construction and cost about half as much as the Countach. 410 examples were produced until the takeover by Chrysler at the end of the decade.

by Daniel Vaughan | Oct 2017