Consider the Strada a refined version of the racing Murcielago R-GT with dramatic black graphic-over-hyper yellow paint hiding a carbon fiber enhanced lightweight chassis, upgraded suspension, enhanced brakes and a custom tuned exhaust exiting just under the new rear wing. Aside from the aero-enhancing shopping cart handle is a black gold weaved front splitter and rear diffuser to set the Strada apart from 'lesser' Lambos. Pop inside and you'll be greeted with custom leather trimmed sport buckets and a healthy dosage of Alcantara suede. Not a bad place to spend some time. Not bad at all.

[MotorAuthority]

Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada
Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murcielago Strada

József Erdősi was an exchange student at the University of Bologna, following in the footsteps of Dante Alighieri and Nicolaus Copernicus. Unlike the millennium-old university’s famous earlier alumni, he was not studying to be a poet or an astronomer: József’s future lay in agricultural engineering. He spent some of his practice time at Lamborghini Trattori, the tractormaking giant founded in post-war Italy by the man who would go on to give Enzo Ferrari bad dreams.

Through the right connections with the right people, József was allowed to transfer for a few weeks to Lamborghini’s other factory—Automobili Lamborghini—in the village of Sant’Agata Bolognese, a hamlet in Emilia-Romagna province between Bologna and Modena. It was here that Ferruccio Lamborghini had founded his sports car manufacture in 1963 to take on Ferrari in neighboring Maranello.

As an engineering student, József spent his days in the brake and engine assembly areas. He was also granted access to the room where Miuras received their scheduled maintenance.

It was not all work and no play for Mr. Erdősi. One day, an enigmatic question came his way about his cardiovascular health. Upon replying in the positive, he found out what it was all about. The young future engineer was about to receive a ride in the fastest road car of its day: a Lamborghini Miura.

“The seat was extremely low. I buckled up with a four-point racing harness. Then, as we rolled out of the factory, the test driver floored it. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. He switched to second gear at 90 MPH, third gear at 125 MPH, fourth at 140 MPH and went all the way to fifth gear at an astonishing 160 MPH,” he recalled in a recent conversation. “A field then approached at great speed. I was bracing myself for the inevitable ride through rows of corn when the driver flicked the wheel and took a corner at an unlikely speed. This went on for another forty minutes.”

By József’s recollections, the test driver he rode with that day had been the racing mechanic for Lorenzo Bandini—Ferrari’s Formula One and sports car driver—until Bandini’s fiery demise at the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix.

An avid photographer, József took a number of pictures on black and white Ilford film. His photos offer a unique glimpse into a nascent Lamborghini factory in its 60s heydays. Four years later, Ferruccio Lamborghini would be gone as the factory’s owner and car manufacturers everywhere would be face to face with the incompatibility of monster V12’s with the 1973 oil crisis.

Lamborghini would survive this all in the coming decades until it came to rest as a subsidiary of a German giant, producing fabulous modern cars in a brand-new Audi-built factory on the same spot.

The Miura production line in all its high-tech 1969 glory.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

Parallel to the Miura was built the four-seater Espada, both Marcello Gandini designs using the same 4-liter Giotto Bizzarrini V12 engine.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

Another shot of the Espada line shows a distinct Espada feature: the huge pane of glass on the rear hatch.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

This is a Miura S in for regular checkup. It had been shipped to Italy from California.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

A Miura being serviced, with the engine cover taken clear off.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

A finished Espada with old-school Italian license plates. In the background, you can see the open door of a Miura, which, when viewed from front, resembles a bull’s horn.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

A Lamborghini V12 engine on the test bench, with twelve polished velocity trumpets capping its Webers.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

Another shot of the V12 in the test chamber.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

This is a complete engine-transmission assembly. You can see from its longitudinal setup that it’s meant for the Espada: in the Miura, the same engine is mounted transversely behind the cabin.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

A Miura stripped down to the bare chassis as it is being serviced. For the sake of everyday usability, the velocity trumpets are replaced with common air boxes.

Photo Credit: József Erdősi

Since a lot of you seemed to like our last post, The Bailout In Perspective: How Many Bugatti Veyrons Is $700 Billion Dollars?, we decided to give you another fun little insight into why our economy sucks so bad right now. And with the recent news of Chrysler's bankruptcy filing, we're afraid it'll continue to get worse and worse, meaning for car guys (and gals) like you and me, our toys will continue to go bye-bye. Let's hope that's not the case.

We wish we could have that last big-ass garage at the end of the clip...hell the yellow sports car wouldn't be so bad either. [via Vimeo]

For most, borrowing a Shelby Mustang or even a Corvette is great entertainment for the long weekend (or even a high school reunion). But for some, that Hertz Fun Fleet just isn’t going to cut it. Not even close. Enter the much higher caliber, exotic car luxury rental world where you can rent a Ferrari F430, or just as easily, a Rolls Royce Phantom, for the weekend.

We’ve all wondered what it would be like to pilot some of Italy’s finest down our favorite back roads or maybe even pick up a date in 007’s favorite ride, but what’s it really take to make this happen and more importantly, will you still have access to that $11 insurance policy?

Popular in locales where exotic cars are the norm; places like LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York and Miami; the exotic car rental business is booming. When enough money still isn’t enough and image is everything, a $100,000+ car can move you right up the social ladder and it can all be yours from anywhere between $200- to $7000-per day (at one rental lot a Saleen S7 is $7740-per day). In this day and age, it’s not about who you know; but what you drive and who sees you driving it. It’s no surprise that males are in the majority when it comes to exotic car rental and are mainly looking for one thing – women. According to one South Floridian rental outfit, more than a few of their male customers have luxury cars of their own, but are looking to pick up a car for the sole purpose of remaining undetected by their spouse while they go out with the girlfriend for a night on the town. Oftentimes the rental outfit will drop off the car at a valet or in a parking structure to allow the customer to remain discreet, while all business transactions are done over the phone (Take that, Joey Greco!). Others just want to feel what it’s like to cruise around in a LP560-4 for a day – to walk in the better man’s shoes, or they’re looking to spend the day test driving a car that they might actually buy, though that’s an unlikely story in most cases.

At the opposite side of the spectrum is the small amount of females who play a role in this business. While there surely are a few that rent for the same reason as the men, there are more than a few who need to appear as if they have money in order to attract the big money. These cars can grant first-class access to restaurants, clubs and more importantly, the guys with the big bucks (AKA, not you or me).

Now that you know the types of people who rent these cars, let’s look at the businesses themselves. Imagine walking up to a lot that has Murciélagos, Continental GTs, 612 Scagliettis, and boat loads of Mercedes S-Class and Hummer H2s. Now imagine if you were the guy who owned the lot. You’ve got some pretty serious cash, right? Wrong. A common misconception about exotic car rental companies is that they’re hugely profitable, when in fact the majority of them are actually quite the opposite. Instead of owning the vehicles that they advertise (for reasons explained further on), they simply flick through their rolodex and call up one of their many over-extended clients and go pick up that Lamborghini you really wanted for the weekend. While many of these cars cost in excess of $3000-per-month to own, their owners lend them out to a broker for a few days each month to cover the cost of ownership rather than lose their pride and joy - American capitalism at its best.

The reason that many of these rental outfits don’t own the vehicles they rent is a lack of financing available to them due to bad credit, bankruptcy and the fact that no lender wants to give out the $1million+ that it takes to start a risky operation like this. Many of the owners are previous club promoters out to make a quick buck and quickly learn that it’s not as easy as it initially seemed. A quick search through the phonebook will net you half-a-dozen different rental stores in South Beach, while only a few of them still reside or ever resided in their advertised location, most likely due to previous bankruptcy. These bankrupt businesses somehow pop up again in a new location down the street with a new owner on the license and restart business operations with no one the wiser. They’re able to do this because of the poor regulation of the exotic car rental industry, something that the insurance companies are furious about.

This brings us around to the legality issues surrounding the exotic car rental business. While a visit to your local Enterprise rental office seems like a pain-in-the-ass when you have to fill out a half-hours worth of clipboarded paperwork using a crappy Bic ballpoint pen; be thankful you have to do it. These forms not only give Enterprise the ability to know who they’re renting to, they also give you an important piece of protection – insurance. When you go to one of the exotic car rental outfits, you may have to fill out some forms that seem really important, but this is mainly so that if a) you don’t return the car or, knock on wood, b) flip it upside-down and wrap it around a tree all in one fell swoop; the rental company’s owner can send his paid-by-the-bruise gorillas after you. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to be in this situation.

The list of reasons for these companies not having proper insurance is about as long as the Ocean Drive strip, but it’s mainly from years and years of these business’s involvement in fraud. The brokers mentioned earlier, don’t properly insure the cars that they “borrow” from their clients and coincidentally neither do the over-extended clients. After Brent and Dirk came and kicked your ass inside-out for wrecking the custom-painted, bright purple Maserati Gran Turismo on 22s that you rented; the owner of the car, not the business; had to make a claim to his insurance. His reasoning goes a little something like this (cue the oldest exotic car rental excuse in the book), “My friend was borrowing it.” The insurance companies used to buy into this, but now they’ve become wiser to the game and will end up calling it a total loss. Bummer dude.

The other reason why insurance companies won’t insure most of the exotic car rental guys is simple – It’s just too high of a risk. Because not only do rented high-performance cars get wrecked at the hands of weekend amateur enthusiasts; warehouses full of cars magically burst into flames or they disappear all-together into some shipping container at the Port of Long Beach never to be seen from again (unless you happen to live in Eastern Europe).

So you’ve read this far and you still want to rent that Porsche Carrera GT for your weekend jaunt to Vegas? You’re in luck because despite all the bad seeds in the business, there are quite a few legit operations nationwide. One of the better outfits is Gotham Dream Cars, where you can rent by the day, weekend or even set yourself and some friends up with the Dream Car Tour; a 4+ hour drive in 6 or more exotic cars with each driver getting 30-minutes behind the wheel of each car. Or for the more budget conscious (read: sarcasm) there’s Beverly Hills Rent-a-Car where you can really indulge with a $25,000-a-day cruise in their Bugatti Veyron (bonus for no mileage charges!). You can even “go green” and rent one of their hybrids for a day, giving you the perfect eco-friendly choice while shopping for your next Hummer H2.

The moral of this story is this: If you decide that you need to treat yourself to the car of your dreams the next time you take a vacation, be smart and please make sure the guy you’re renting from is wearing fewer gold chains than your old Uncle Sal. Consider yourself warned.

[source: Miami New Times]

Earlier this year, we reported on sports-car builder Morgan's work toward building a hydrogen-powered take on its famed roadsters. Now, we've got an image to match the concept. The result is the LIFECar, a one-seater based on the Morgan Aero Eight, which employs a fuel cell powering four electric motors, one at each drive wheel. Of course, half the fun of a Morgan is the possibility of being flung over the elbow-height doors and into a tree during a particularly heinous country curve. (We're pretty sure the driver of a multimillion-dollar LIFECar may not enjoy that degree of uncertainty.) Still, if the company's timeline is correct, it may have one of the first hydrogen cars in production.

LIFECar project promises an efficient high performance fuel cell sports car within three years [Gizmag]

Related:
Morgan Gets Into Hydrogen [internal]

Yes, that Morgan, builder of cars that still use wood as a structural element. Charles Morgan is working with a research firm called Qinetiq on a high-performance, fuel cell-powered sports car, to be called the LIFEcar. Due to drop in about three years, the LIFEcar is designed to show folks that hydrogen can be more than just a performance-enhancer for nuclear weapons and fuel for iconic album cover art. Quoth Morgan: "What's really exciting about driving? Perhaps the noise has nothing to do with it. Perhaps it's possible to make a car that's completely quiet, that drives like a sports car makes you feel every bit of the road but all you hear is a whoosh." We'll take ours with the Ferrari V-12 quadraphonic soundtrack option, thanks.

Do Sports Cars and Hydrogen Mix? [Fuel Cell Works]

Related:
Morgan Aeromax: A Swiss Banker's Custom Ride [Internal]