Owner Lost Lambo in 2020, Finds It With No Doors, Hood, and Headlights

Ciro Ciampi of the Petrolheadonism Club told the story before. But he could never reveal that much before. The police had an investigation going on, while Ciro was running his own investigation, and the information found along the way was classified.

The owner of the Diablo, Alister McKillop, stored the car in a facility owned by someone he had met through a Lamborghini dealership. The man was a car collector himself, so he seemed reliable, and the place seemed safe. Furthermore, it was a very severe pandemic lockdown at the time. Nobody would be able to go to the storage or drive out of it, especially in a yellow Diablo, without getting noticed. So, what could go wrong?

Alistar did not really need the Diablo at the time. If he wanted to drive, he had a Murcielago. But at the end of July/beginning of August 2020, he received a letter from the authorities, informing him that somebody had tried to register his car in their name. It is a 25-pound ($32) procedure, which does not prove ownership. However, why would anybody do that with his car? He found it hard to believe it.

But when he went to the storage facility to check on his Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 VT, the car was missing. The one who owned the storage space thought that Alistar collected the car himself some time that summer. But the car keys were still there. Something was terribly wrong. Because Alistair had handed over the car keys to the owner of the storage facility, the insurance would not pay out.

When the owner realized his car was missing, he called on some connections to help him find it and Ciro Ciampi was one of them. He even offered a 15,000-pound ($19,110) reward to those who would bring relevant information.

One day, they received a video of the Lamborghini, sitting next to a Mercedes-Benz G-Class in a barn. The one who sent the video, told them that the car was going to be shipped out to Africa. Police suspected both Ciro and Alistar were trying to cheat on the insurance company and get the money, so they ignored them and all the information they had picked up along the way.

The Lamborghini Diablo, ready to be shipped out to Africa

During the winter holiday, on December 29, 2022, Ciro got an unexpected phone call from Alistar. The authorities had found his car in a disused cattle market car park in Yeovil, Southern UK. It was covered in a black tarp and it was missing several body parts. They went down there and talked to locals to find out how the car had gotten there and why in the world it had been stripped. It still had the engine, wings, and interior, but it was missing the doors, the front hood, wheels, and headlights.

Ciro and Alistar eventually found out that a firm, Canyon Goldmines, was reportedly involved in the disappearance of the Diablo. The car had supposedly been taken as compensation for a debt, but the one taking it had no idea who it actually belonged to. Someone had lost money investing in goldmines and was trying to make up for the loss by taking a car that they thought belonged to someone else.

A video uploaded to Facebook by Car Key Solutions in Brentwood showed how a team of experts fitted a new ignition barrel to a Diablo 6.0 VT. The number plate was fake, but a smart policeman identified a sticker on the rear window and realized it was the car that they had been searching for.

The Diablo was in mint condition six months before it was found stripped of doors, hood, and headlights. So they had some locations where the car had been over the past two years, but they still could not link all the pieces together. So, they went to Brentwood undercover to meet the people at Car Key Solutions and found out that the source of the car was three Asian gentlemen.

A local, aware of the illegal events happening in his area and usually involved in them, helped them out. He was not the suspect they were looking for but he was of great help.

Goldmine scam and kidnapping cases involved in the story of the lost Lamborghini

So, they followed the trail and found out that the lockup garage where the car was kept in Leicestershire was sold to the three Asian gentlemen with some of the cars stored there. The yellow Lamborghini was among them, but the keys were nowhere in sight. So the new owners, who were probably planning to sell it, asked for the help of Car Key Solutions. That is how the car ended up online in that Facebook video.

Along the way, one of the Asians was kidnapped. They also found that a Kenyan gentleman had been working on the cars in the lockup garage before the facility changed hands. It was then that they realized that the Kenyan goldmines scam might be linked to the route that the Lamborghini followed over the past two years.

However, they had four police forces involved in the investigation at some point, not communicating with each other. But, eventually, they managed to get the car back. EBC Brakes stole it for them from those who were planning to sell it.

Once he finally got it back, after two years of intense search, Alistair decided to get rid of it as soon as possible. He really did not want to have anything to do with a car involved in scams, kidnapping, and beating.

The Lambo will be back on the road soon

The new owner decided to rebuild it. But when he cataloged all the missing parts, he came to an eye-watering 120,000 pounds ($152,882). That was how much it would have cost him to put the Lamborghini Diablo back together. Ciro was sure that the missing parts had not been sold yet. So, he made a final call, offering 40,000 pounds within 48 hours for the missing components.

One day, his phone rang with a private number even though it was not his number given in the announcement video. The man on the line told him he knew where the parts were and would help them get them for the money. It was the same person who had contacted Ciro months before to supply evidence of the car being in a workshop in August 2022. That is where he had Ciro's number.

So, they got everything back except for the wheels. But those were easily replaceable. The car is now complete and ready to be painted. So, the whole story can finally be disclosed.

Ciro was the one who started the engine of the completed Lambo. That 6.0-liter V12 sounded like it longed to hit the road and throw those 542 horses (550 metric horsepower) and 457 pound-feet (620 Newton meters) to the pavement.