That maneuver also shed light on what’s possibly the most difficult thing about driving the LM002 — its pedal box, and more specifically, its clutch. Oh, my God. I’ve driven cars with heavy clutches before. This was like something from a different planet. By the time I arrived back after my short drive, my leg felt nearly numb. I mean, it was completely worth it, but if you want to buy your own LM002 you can’t ever skip leg day. It’s not like the gas and brake pedal were faultless, either. You’ve got to absolutely mash the brakes to get any sort of stopping power, and the throttle requires a similar aggressive press. It works almost like an on/off switch. You get nothing, and then all the sudden that massive 5.2-liter V12 roars and the revs climb faster than you might expect. It’s honestly sort of startling, but I’m sure it would be very helpful in aggressively driving through Italian traffic.
More on that engine, though. What a piece of art. Famously, the LM002 borrowed its engine from the Countach, pumping out 444 horsepower and 368 pound-feet of torque. Today that’s nothing, but in 1986? It was unprecedented. All of that power is routed through a slightly crunchy dog-leg five-speed manual gearbox to a beefy four-wheel-drive system. I know that this car is a Lamborghini, but it is deeply slow. When it was new, the 0-to-60-mph time was about 7.7 seconds. Today, a Toyota Prius will best it by nearly seven-tenths of a second, but you won’t give a damn about that.
What really surprised me was the LM002’s relatively compact size. It comes in at 188.6 inches long and 78 inches wide, which means this seemingly massive truck is only 2.7 inches longer and 4.3 inches wider than a brand-new BMW X3, and that’s not exactly a large vehicle, is it? Certainly, the Lambo’s upright blockiness adds to the visual size of the car, but if you ignore how cumbersome the controls can be, it’s not terribly difficult to maneuver.
Driving the LM002 is like nothing else on earth, for better or worse. It makes you feel so special and on top of the world that you wonder how you could possibly go the rest of your life without driving one ever again. I know some people say “Never meet your heroes,” but those people are fools. It’s so brilliantly over-the-top and such a sensory overload that you won’t care that it reeks of gasoline, your right leg is being cooked by the transmission tunnel and you don’t fit very well. None of that matters because the LM002 demands both your love and respect in equal measures.