Lucky Lamborghini escape

Lamborghini’s Research and Development Director, Maurizio Reggiani, came within 50 metres of becoming the 18th victim of last week’s earthquake in Modena, Italy.

The man who gave us the Aventador’s carbon-fibre chassis, ISR gearbox and all-new V12 engine was nearly crushed in central Mirandola, in northern Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, when a 5.4-level earthquake struck on May 29.

Reggiani (pictured) was caught in what remained of the town’s historic centre, which had been devastated by a 6.0-level quake on May 20, when an ancient facade collapsed just seconds after he had hurried past it at the peak of the quake.

“It’s not a feeling I want to ever have again,” Reggiani said. “It could so easily have been me.”

Lamborghini has been far closer to the epicentres of the earthquakes than its fellow Supercar Valley brands, Ferrari, Pagani and Maserati, though there is no reported damage at its Sant’Agata factory.

And the region’s two-week earthquake crisis has yet to abate, with a 5.2-level quake destroying the ancient clock tower in Novi di Modena, just to the north of Modena, on Sunday night. The region woke up to a 3.8-level quake yesterday (04/06) morning and suffered more than 40 aftershocks before lunchtime Monday, indicating the crisis might not be over yet.

While the European Union has committed €250 million to rebuild the area and Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne visited the Case New Holland tractor plant last week, Italian seismologists have been at a loss to ease the minds of locals.

They have explained that the region’s sandy base is a force multiplier for seismic activity, but questions still remain about why so many factory buildings, built since earthquake-proofing construction legislation was implemented in the 1990s, have collapsed.

It is not known how many local supplier companies for the Supercar Valley brands have been hit by the crisis, as aftershocks forced civil protection authorities to keep even factory owners out of their buildings for days to assess the damage.

While the Gallardo appears largely unaffected by the crisis, Reggiani was in hard-hit Mirandola to investigate the operational status of the paint supplier for the Aventador. But paint may be the least of Lamborghini’s problems, because the Aventador’s V12 engines are cast in San Felice, which was all but wiped out by the week-long earthquake barrage.

Picture courtesy of Motor Trend

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