Lambo financial results

Supercar maker Lamborghini has waved outgoing President Stephan Winkelmann goodbye in style by crossing the 3000-car threshold for the first time in its history.

Announcing its full-year results from 2015 in Sant'Agata yesterday, Lamborghini's figures showed its turnover leapt 39 per cent from €629 million in 2014 to €872 million, as the V12 Aventador (pictured) continued to be a strong player.

Winkelmann said the Raging Bull's sales had risen 28 per cent from 2530 in 2014 to 3245 cars in 2015.

"In 2015 we achieved growth of our business for the fifth year in a row and historic highs with key figures," said the President and CEO, who will take over as head of Audi's quattro GmbH go-fast division in two weeks.

"We have also made wide-reaching strategic decisions that will facilitate the company's mid- and long-term success in global luxury automobile markets," he said.

Lamborghini delivered 2242 Huracan V10-powered sports cars in 2015, the car's first full year on the market. But the surge in revenue was urged on by the stunning strength of the V12 Aventador supercar, five years into its production life. Boosted by the arrival of the 522kW SuperVeloce LP750-4 in the second quarter of the year, Lamborghini delivered 1003 Aventadors, roughly on pace with the 1110 it sold in 2014, the 1113 from 2013 and the 976 it sold in 2012.

It will also be remembered as a big year for Lamborghini in other ways, with the brand finally getting the green light for the Urus SUV to give it a third full model line to secure its cash flow.

Winkelmann, the longest serving President in Lamborghini's long and sometimes-chequered history, has tried several times to push the third model line, beginning with the front-engined Estoque concept car from the Paris motor show in 2008.

"It took us two attempts and a long period of time," Winkelmann said in an interview during this week's Geneva motor show.

"We were not ready in Lamborghini in 2008 with the Estoque. We were not the right size as a company.

"Sometimes you don't know. Things like that [the Estoque project being refused] don't always happen for the bad. The Urus will be the perfect car for us at the perfect time."

Winkelmann hinted that trying to develop a full third model line in 2008, just as the Global Financial Crisis sank its teeth into the brand's profits, could have placed Lamborghini in real difficulty.

Back then, its sales collapsed from a record of 2430 cars in 2008 to just 1515 a year later and 1302 in 2010. It took Lamborghini until 2014 to recover the sales position it had before the crisis.

By the time the Urus begins production in 2018, the factory's production space will have doubled to 150,000 square metres, with several hundred jobs created in the Bologna area.

The Urus will also be the first Lamborghini to use turbochargers and is the obvious choice in the range to eventually get hybridized electrified power.

"The balance between what we do with super sports cars and the rest of the brand is the important thing for the future," Winkelmann said.

"There are technologies available [turbocharging] that mean it is not difficult to do high-end cars that are not light enough. There are cars that are fast but not ready to be moved fast for more than one lap.

"When they [turbochargers] are better in their performance than a naturally aspirated engine, that is the key for us.

"We have a position as a super sports car manufacturer and the Urus will be the super sports car of the SUVs and it will be very different for today and tomorrow and it will have a unique position. It has to be the fastest SUV," he confirmed.

The Urus is eagerly awaited in markets like the US, China, Germany and the UK, especially, while the brand's three biggest markets roughly shared 2015 sales honours. North America and China split the honours as the biggest individual markets, followed by Japan, the UK, the Middle East and Germany.

"What I've learnt is that working in super sports cars is much more difficult than it seems," Winkelmann said.

"There is no certainty and nothing is what it seems. We always have to exceed expectations and whatever we do is just quite enough, never too much."

Winkelmann suggested the coming wave of autonomous technologies would help brands like Lamborghini, rather than hurting them, as people flocked to sports cars in an effort to maintain their individuality.

"Autonomous driving is not in the DNA of our brand," he said.

"Autonomous and digitization are the new challenges for the automotive industry, but for us they are the last challenges.

"For digitalization, it will be the Urus, and for sustainability, too, but there will always be a market for super sports cars. I strongly believe so.

"The more the world tries to make everything one colour, the more there is for cars with our type," Winkelmann stated.

Picture courtesy of photo-4.com