It attracted people like a magnet. It drew attention like a convertible in freezing temperatures. And it left home with the Best in Show award. It happened at the eighth edition of the London Concours, where the Lamborghini Diablo SE30 Supercharged Prototype wowed the crowd.
The purple contraption that you see in the photo gallery is a one-off Lamborghini Diablo SE30 Supercharged Prototype. It was selected as the Best in Show among the 80 cars participating in the concours, all displayed at London's ultimate summer automotive garden party.
It was a yard full of classics, hypercars, and motor racing icons, displayed in a five-acre oasis of green close to the Bank. The one that got all the attention and the greatest award of all was the 1994 Lamborghini Diablo prototype.
And this year's winner is a devil with an attitude. The Diablo Prototype sports a supercharger upgrade. It is the car that came out of the hands of the experts of Lamborghini Hoecker in Landau, Germany. They teamed up with the Lamborghini factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese, northern Italy to make this project a reality.
The model is the most potent Diablo that has ever seen the light of day. The supercharged 5.7-liter V12 engine pumps out 634 horsepower. When the motorized devil rolled off the production line, it had 525 horsepower. The owner of the prototype regularly lets the car stretch her legs on the German autobahn, hitting over 225 mph (362 kph) in no-speed-limit sectors.
Photo: London Concours
To make his dream come true, the owner paid 200,000 Deutsch Marks in 1994, which would be the equivalent of around 180,000 euros in today's money, for the supercharger conversion.
The model was equipped with the brakes donated by a McLaren F1, which are capable of withstanding the extra oomph. It also got its ECU adapted to be able to handle the supercharger. It received a carbon intake, and a speedometer scaled up to 400 kph (248 mph).
One day, Lamborghini's chief test driver, Valentino Balboni, requested a test drive with the supercharged Diablo. He liked it so much that he considered a limited run of supercharged examples. But the project never got the green light.
What catches the eye without a doubt, except for the radical design of the Diablo, is its deep purple paint, which shone in the sunlight on the days of the London Concours.
An iconic Formula 1 car with a very 1970s livery received the Chairman's Award, offered by the Chairman of the Judges, Peter Read. The livery, which depicts a Penthouse Pet cuddling a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, was designed by Frank Dernie and Nigel Stroud, while the race car was powered by the Cosworth DFV 3.0-liter V8 engine, mated to a Hewland FGA400 five-speed gearbox.
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