I Made This : Revuelto and beyond

Mitja Borkert on how Lamborghini is embracing tech for its supercars

Nishant Padhiar 3 Oct 2023 03:49 PM

Centro Stile is the epicentre of Lamborghini design and Mitja Borkert is the man in charge as the Head of Design. As the custodian of the brand’s look and feel, he is charge of literally shaping the future. Self-proclaimed champions of colours, the studio presentation area is peppered with of colour swatches  and scale models and with a catalogue of over 350 options, it does make for a very interesting backdrop to this interaction. Nishant Padhiar gets access to this inner sanctum where road legal spaceships are born…

I am sure we will translate the aural experience of a V12, V10 or even the twin-turbo V8 of a Lamborghini into the all-electric era. We always have an answer for the future, but speaking as a designer, we have our design DNA and it doesn’t matter what technology is in our cars, we will use it to make the design even stronger. With the Terzo Millenio, we took the same design DNA with the use of different spaces. For example in the future we won’t have mufflers or exhaust pipes and that space can instead be used for aerodynamics. Without revealing any secrets, I can tell you from my own experience… I’m convinced that in terms of feeling like a pilot or the emotional performance when driving around in a Lamborghini Revuelto in electric mode, it’s even cooler. We are of course about the sound and both we and the customers are enjoying it, but as a new dimension, when you leave your house in EV mode, it not only looks like a spaceship but even sounds like one now, underlining the shape of the Revuelto. So I’m absolutely not scared. I’m anyway a very optimistic person and I’m sure we will have a very cool answer and Lamborghini will deliver this.

I know that you can use AI to gain a different perspective on design But maybe I’m an old-school guy but I have to say we are not using artificial intelligence at the moment because I am convinced that first of all you need to have an idea and you need to sketch it. All the cars we have created are designed with the heart of a human being. I know you can generate shapes and ask the AI for some ideas but they will always look “generated” so therefore I strongly believe in what we are able to imagine and create as designers, as engineers…as Lamborghini. Take the Sterrato for example, it was an idea over a glass of wine with the engineers who were wondering how can we bring the off-road drifting experience of an Urus to a compact super sportscar like the Huracan. The team was convinced that it would be huge fun to drive and I was convinced about the look of the car because by lifting up this Lamborghini into a higher position, adding the cladding, protection, juicier wheels for more ground clearance, rally lights, air scoop and so on, you can almost tell how much fun it would be to drive just by looking at it. It’s an idea that can only come from Lamborghini and not AI.

The swipe-screen feature from the Revuelto will make it to other cars It is something that shows our strength at Lamborghini. We already have state of the art connectivity and graphics in the field of super sports cars and here we also wanted to have fun. You usually always have a passenger with you. In my case, it’s my wife or son and they like to have an entertainment screen. With the swipe feature, it gets really interactive where you can swipe content from one screen to the other screen. It’s an addition to the ownership experience where you want to bring your friends to join in your joy. We want to offer surprising little details in our interiors which may be available only in a Lamborghini.

I should be more inspired by sci-fi movies since our cars look like that! But honestly speaking, my wife watches a lot of those futuristic movies. I don’t have time because we are so busy at Lamborghini creating the future so at the end of the day, what you see is the inspiration that is coming from our team. We have a fantastic design team here so we are always full of futuristic ideas. The inspiration always comes from the stomach and our hearts and this is how we create things here at Lamborghini!