Luxury Insider - The Online Luxury Magazine

I stamped on the race-bred carbon-ceramic brakes and threw the car in later and harder to each and every bend, knuckles gripping harder and breath held longer, but the car just refused to yield.

Those brakes didn’t work so well in town, however, as a dead spot at the top provided several terror-inducing moments as the car in front loomed large before the extra pressure stood the car on its nose. For pure street use, the metal discs are just as good and offer more feel, so leave that box unticked. For hard track drivers though, the carbon-ceramics won’t fade, ever, so they’re as essential as the six-point safety belt.

On track, the upshifts on the Magnetti Marelli-based manumatic take a soothing lift on the throttle to avoid sending an unsettling shockwave through the transmission as the Superleggera smashes violently into the rev limiter into its own automatic upchange. In town, the drive train winces through the automatic downchanges with irritated clunks and thumps coming from deep within the car.

Winkelmann admits to a certain pain knowing that 80 per cent of drivers will opt for the semi-automatic – he is a driver at heart and loves the simple perfection of a six-speed box. He has the rare luxury of borrowing a manual when he feels like going for a thrash though, and his daily driver is fitted with the paddle-shift system that undoubtedly walks a better line between fun and usability in traffic.

And with the loud pedal pushed to the floor, all thoughts about the gearbox evaporated as the Superleggera did its level best to snap my neck with pure forward thrust. It hits 100kph in just 3.8s and will continue through the box almost unabated to the incredulous top-speed of 315kph. The noise is like a drug, the speed is a mainline shot of adrenaline and it’s one of those cars that demands to be pushed. Even when the fun is supposedly over.

There was just the drive back to the hotel, but that drive wasn’t along the Interstate. Lamborghini had laid out a route to a natural beauty spot, and there it was.

The typical desert road opened out like a red carpet in front of my feet, just waiting for the stampede on tap with a simple flex of the right foot. When it came, the explosive yowl of a V10 engine seemingly shot the unflappable buzzards from the dry Arizona sky and sent a thunderbolt streaking across the desert with its own personal weather vortex whipping up behind it. The speed on the clock by the time the trucks in the middle distance flew back towards my nose was a jail-baiting 280kph. The noise was out of this world and the adrenaline just kept on coming.

Speeding to this extent is simply begging to spend time in one of Arizona’s less desirable establishments, and had the Sheriff seen what had happened, I’d still be explaining my actions. But just like the 350 fortunate souls that can pay 20 per cent more than the price of a standard Gallardo for a honed and sharpened version, sometimes desire is all the justification you need.