Lamborghini is one of those companies that never does anything by halves. Its cars aren’t just great: they’re incredible. And when it decided to build an off-roader, the result wasn’t just odd: it was little short of unbelievable

HALF A CENTURY AGO, a tractor factory owner from Sant’Agata Bolognese in northern Italy bought himself a Ferrari. A keen car nut, Ferrucio Lamborghini already owned several exotic machines, but this eclipsed them all – and he was smitten. Over the next few years, Lamborghini owned four different Ferraris, all of them variations on the company’s high-selling 250 GT. Yet despite this, he had a problem: every time he tried to drive the cars hard, their clutches would slip. After several visits to Maranello to have clutches replaced, Lamborghini finally decided to have it out with Enzo Ferrari himself. The famously irascible genius was in no mood to be told his cars weren’t up to the job: ‘You may be able to drive a tractor,’ he scoffed in his customer’s face, ‘but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari.’

Lamborghini’s answer was to modify one of his 250s, adding a heavier-duty clutch and rebuilding the engine with twin-cam heads and a bank of six carbs. Two years after that, his company launched its first competitor to Ferrari, the 350 GTV – and one of the very greatest names in the history of automotive excess was born.

Scroll forward 23 years, via evocative names like Miura, Espada, Jarama, Urraco and of course Countach. Lamborghini is now well established as the number one pin-up on every teenage boy’s bedroom wall, next possibly to that tennis girl who forgot her pants. What dramatically named, achingly beautiful supercar is it going to come out with next? The answer lies in a concept vehicle the company produced back in 1977. Called the Cheetah, this was one of the most disastrous failures ever – yet through a combination of blind faith and sheer bloody-mindedness, it paved the way for what was to become the forerunner of today’s high-performance ultra-SUVs. That supercar, as it turned out, was to be neither dramatically named nor achingly beautiful. Lambo’s previous model was called the Jalpa, and its next was the Diablo – but this mid-80s’ monster was named simply the LM002. And what a monster it was – harking back to the company’s days as a tractor manufacturer, this brutal, square-sided 4x4 combined the look and proportions of a Hummer with, barely believably, the engine from the definitive Lamborghini, the 183mph Countach.

‘Excessive’ doesn’t even begin to describe the LM002. It was a colossus, an extravagant fantasy draped with leather-clad luxury inside and boasting the sort of road presence even the Countach could only dream of. As a precursor to vehicles like the Porsche Cayenne, it was basic, truck-like and lurid – but it would do 130mph, which is still fast by 4x4 standards today and, back then, was quite simply unheard-of. The production version of the LM002 went on sale in 1986, a time when Madonna was topping the charts with Papa Don’t Preach, Maradona was hand-balling his way to World Cup glory and a guaranteed place in the hearts of every Scottish football fan, and British 4x4 buyers were getting to grips with exciting new vehicles like the Suzuki SJ413, Isuzu Trooper and Daihatsu Fourtrak.

If you were around at the time and the LM002 escaped your notice, this was probably because less than 350 were ever built, let alone imported to Britain. Like so many of the most expensive things in life, it could only be glimpsed in glossy magazines, or possibly in brief glimpses on Knightsbridge or Kensington High Street. The LM002 was like the Countach, only ten times larger, louder and rarer. This was indeed the pinnacle of off-road exclusivity. Unlike the Countach, however, which still looks futuristic even today, the LM002 bore a striking resemblance to another vehicle. No prizes for guessing what we’re talking about, here; the Hummer began life in exactly the same way, as a military workhorse designed to be sold in huge numbers to Uncle Sam.  The difference is that the Humvee, as it was then known, succeeded where the Cheetah concept failed. In the mid-1970s, the US Army invited tenders for the vehicle which would replace its old Jeeps – and with Lamborghini’s core business having taken a huge blow a few years previously when a major tractor contract was cancelled at the last minute, the company decided to compete.

The Cheetah sounded fine on paper. A 5.9-litre Chrysler V8 engine drove a three-speed automatic transmission and full-time transfer case. Twin diff locks provided traction, and its rugged chassis was topped off with a fibreglass body providing enough space to accommodate four fully equipped soldiers and a driver. That was on paper. But on the road, it was a different matter. A large cast iron engine is never going to be the best thing for handling – but when it’s slung out over the back axle, things are bound to get dicey. Despite its size, too, the lowtech LA 360 engine only produced 180bhp, which combined with a kerb weight of 2042kg meant the vehicle might usefully have been called ‘Sloth’ rather than ‘Cheetah’.

When the US Army took the vehicle for testing in California, they succeeded in destroying the only prototype. Lamborghini didn’t bother asking for it back. The coveted military contract was eventually won by AM General, and the legendary Humvee was born. In spite of the Cheetah’s failure, and the resulting escalation of Lamborghini’s financial difficulties, the company decided to persist with the concept. Quite why a supercar manufacturer was so determined to branch into this sphere of the automotive market is hard to understand, especially during a period when 4x4s were still largely considered utility vehicles. Lamborghini itself describes this era as: ‘difficult due to strategic mistakes, with the company overinvesting in an off-road vehicle with no prospect of sales.’

Nevertheless, what followed was the LM001, a civilian vehicle little different from the
Cheetah except for the inclusion of a new AMC V8 engine. First unveiled at the 1981 Geneva Auto Show, Lamborghini desperately used it to try and generate interest among oil sheikhs and, still, the US Army, but without success. It seemed the company was slow in learning from its mistakes, as the LM001’s engine was also located in the rear. During testing, this once again proved problematic, causing the front end to lift at high speed – yet another difficulty on top of an overheating engine and poor brakes. Like the Cheetah, the LM001’s largely unimpressive performance meant it never went beyond the stage of a prototype.

LM-001 (above) was meant to be a civilian-friendly version of the Cheetah original, but its rear-mounted engine meant it shared that vehicle’s complete lack of road manners. The LMA (below), on the other hand, was presented as a military model, with a gun turret in the space freed up by moving its engine in the front. With a new chassis and in-house power from the Countach V12, it was this vehicle that would ultimately become the LM002

Eventually, Lamborghini decided to alter the vehicle’s layout, relocating the engine to a more traditional position for what became the LM002, sometimes called the LMA (‘A’ standing for anteriore – Italian for ‘in front’). Built on an entirely new chassis, with a V12 Countach engine, power assisted steering and room for six passengers (made possible by the freeing up of space previously occupied by the engine), this at last was a 4x4 which appeared commercially viable. Third time lucky, it seemed.  However, before the LM002 went into production, two short-lived, experimental projects took place in the form of the LM003 and LM004. The former was almost identical to the LM002, but was powered by a 3.6-litre VM turbo-diesel engine; the combination of 150bhp with a kerb weight of 2600kg meant the prototype’s performance was more akin to one of Lamborghini’s tractors than the ultimate 4x4, and like the Cheetah and LM001 before it, it was quickly given up as a bad job.

The LM004, meanwhile, went in the opposite direction, with a 7.3-litre V12 unit delivering 420bhp. This ultra-4x4 lorded it with a spec list including things like a phone and fridge (this was almost a quarter of a century ago, don’t forget), but despite its bigger than ever engine it still wasn’t any quicker than the LM002 and yet again, just the one prototype was produced. The 7.3-litre engine was in theory available as a special option on the LM002 throughout its life, though this was never made official and it’s not known whether any were ever actually ordered.

Finally, after nine years of experimentation, trial-and-error and downright messing about, the Lamborghini LM002 was finally unveiled at the Brussels Auto Show. Quickly dubbed the ‘Rambo-Lambo’ for its aggressive styling and powerful engine, the very first model went to King Hassan of Morocco and demand soon grew among other dignitaries, oil magnates and celebrities… as well as the odd gun-runner. The list of famous owners included Hunter S Thompson, who wrote about terrorising Porsche drivers in his LM002 on the San Francisco highway, and Sylvester Stallone, no doubt impressed by the reference to his own movie character in the vehicle’s nickname. Although the LM002 has been described retrospectively as a ‘Hummer on steroids,’ the vehicle’s dimensions are actually smaller than those of a Range Rover. With a width of 2002mm, length of 4902mm and height of 1849mm, however, it was still a fairly immense vehicle; Lamborghini soon formed the opinion that the 4x4 was better suited to life in the Middle East, and began to market it accordingly.

A full leather interior was standard, along with a wide range of options including tinted power windows, a premium stereo, televisions, refrigerators, video recorders and bullet-proof glass, making the LM002 one of the first true luxury 4x4s.  It was also the first real performance 4x4, despite its somewhat cumbersome size and nonaerodynamic shape. That Countach engine gave it a 0-62mph time of 8.5 seconds, and when it wasn’t burning along the blacktop at a maximum 130mph, it was defeating the terrain with its 305mm ground clearance, 120% gradient capacity and capacity to wade through everything from sand dunes to fast-flowing water.

These abilities were aided in part by the vehicle’s Scorpion tyres, specially developed by Pirelli to allow an optimal compromise between on and off-road driving behaviour. They were also able to withstand the most extreme temperatures on the planet, as well as being driveable when nearly flat. The LM002 was not without limitations of its own, however, particularly in the fuel economy department, returning an appalling 7mpg.

Considering the cost of filling the vehicle’s 70-gallon fuel tank (‘you don’t get coupons,’ said Car magazine, ‘you get gifts’), running an LM002 was an expensive proposition – though this didn’t deter the wealthy sheikhs and LA yuppies who stumped up the $99,000 asking price to purchase one.

If this makes it sound as if Sant’Agata was swamped by orders, don’t be fooled. Although the production lifespan of the LM002 lasted from 1986 to 1993, during this seven-year period only 328 vehicles were built; it’s not known how many came to the UK, but think single figures. Later examples got a Diablo engine instead of the originals’ Countach unit, the seminal Lambo having finally breathed its last in 1990. But before the LM002 itself went out of production, the company did finally manage to land a military order when the Saudi Arabian army bought forty, with stripped-out interiors and machine gun mounting points.

As sales plodded along and profitability remained a far distant dream, Lamborghini once again put its complete lack of realism on display when it decided to enter the 1989 Paris-Dakar Rally. With its engine pushed to a whopping 600bhp, this was fitted with a full roll cage and upgraded suspension, while measures such as Plexiglas windows and a stripped-out interior were put in place to save weight. So, what happened? The project ran out of money and was abandoned, that’s what. A modified version of the LM002 did participate in the Rallye des Pharaohs in Egypt and an off-road rally in Greece, on both occasions driven by Sandro Munari, but the company’s quest for Dakar glory remained as pie-in-the-sky as everything else about the LM.

In many ways, indeed, Lambo’s failure to compete in the Paris-Dakar is symbolic of the LM’s unfulfilled potential. With sporadic civilian sales and no prospect of serious bulk orders from Middle Eastern armies, it was never going to be a long-term success – something Lamborghini should, to be honest, have recognised as soon as the original Cheetah was so soundly beaten by the Humvee in the quest for Uncle Sam’s trillions.

In 1992, it was Lamborghini’s US importer which made one final effort to save the vehicle, creating a special American edition with an upgraded interior, MSW/OZ wheels and chrome bumpers. Although unveiled with much ceremony at the 1992 Detroit Auto Show, only sixty of the vehicles were ever made, and production of the LM002 finally ceased for good the following year. During this same period, the Humvee was converted into a civilian vehicle and rebranded the Hummer – the beginning of a success story which went on to breed the H1, H2 and H3 models, the latter a global product trading on what is now one of the motoring world’s most recognised brand names. Under the shadow of the original Humvee and its all-American image, the LM002 (which, if fuel consumption is anything to go by, was even more ‘American’) slipped quietly into history to become the forgotten Lamborghini.

All the same, even today the LM002 is seen by many as the Hummer’s forerunner. To Lamborghini, that would be a bitter-sweet epitaph for a glorious failure – but just as the Miura and Countach were decades ahead of their time, so the LM002 presented a vision of a day, two decades later, when affluent customers would be willing to pay anything to buy the best in ultra-luxury performance off-roaders. Yet there could almost have been a postscript to this story, following the sale of Lamborghini to Indonesian investment outfit Megatech in 1996. With interest in off-roaders growing all the time, the company spawned a new Lamborghini 4x4 which would be an updated version of the LM002, rebodied by quirky Italian styling house SZ and renamed Borneo. The vehicle got beyond the drawing board to become a full-size clay model – but it looked like a cross between an Aston Martin Lagonda and a Nissan Murano and had all the charm of one of the demons from a Hieronymous Bosch painting.

It’s always sad when a classic model, however ill-conceived, slips beneath the waves. But when this staggeringly ugly machine proved to be stillborn, it should surely have been cause for a sigh of relief all round. Lamborghini’s credibility had taken enough of a battering for one day.