Zagato Lamborghini LM003

"Ghost Dog - For the kittens" (Ghost-Dog)
10/01/2013 at 21:37 • Filed to: None

During the ownership of Automobili Lamborghini SpA by the Indonesian group, a study was made to put the gargantuan LM002 off road Lamborghini back into production.

It was known that the LM002 had his flaws but it still was a steady low volume seller, therefore a United Kingdom based company was contacted to design a successor to the LM002, but later this job was handed over to SZ Design, a company based on the remains of the Zagato Design Studio.

This was to become the LM003, named Borneo or Galileo, depending on what market it was offered on, the LM003 model was actually a confusing name, because an LM003 did already exist in the past, it was in fact an LM002 with a Turbocharged Diesel engine installed into it instead of the massive V12, but because the complete car was very underpowered with this engine configuration only one prototype was ever made and never left the factory.

A preliminary drawing was made for the new LM003 project, but an in dept market research study revealed only a small interest would exist in the new LM003. Most Lamborghini customers or future customers were not exactly waiting for a new off road vehicle from Sant'Agata, a much more wanted car would have been an Espada successor like the L149 project or a new Diablo successor.

Therefore the Borneo/Galileo never even made it into a prototype, this drawing and a few others made by Zagato exist, together with some technical proposals were about all that ever came from this try out although an actual full scale mock up was created of the LM003.

The shape of the Borneo looked much like the current Range Rover at that time, probably to biggest competitor for the new LM003 during that period, the Range Rover was about the only high-end luxury pseudo off road vehicle in existence, the Mercedes M-series, the Lincoln Navigator or the Hummer did not exist yet. As you might notice, all cars in this market area use a similar layout, using a type of station car look, just like the LM003 was designed to, although Michael Kimberley decided the new LM003 would be presented with three different body configurations, one like the drawing shows here, a 'normal' four door version like the previous LM002 and probably a third looking much like the open top Hummer which appeared later.

The new LM003 Borneo would become a joint venture between Timor, and Indonesian based automaker and Automobili Lamborghini SpA, again the body shell would not be made in Italy but in the Far East. The LM002 bodywork was in fact made in Spain when it was still in production.