Lamborghini has been working hard to keep the latest member of its family, the Centenario, under wraps until its Geneva Motor Show debut at the beginning of March. But much like your wacky uncle Ernie and his design for a self-watering flower pot, the best-laid plans of the saints at Sant’Agata may have been thwarted by the patent office. Patent drawings published this week and dug up by the sleuths at AutoGuide have revealed a brazen new design for a Lamborghini, replete with scoops, vents, and more sharp edges than Edward Scissorhands.
While no specific model name was attached to the drawings, a bit of deduction makes clear that this is almost certainly the Centenario. The Centenario is expected to make its debut in Geneva; these drawings were published only a couple weeks ahead of the show. The Centenario is expected to be a wild looking car in the tradition of the Sesto Elemento, the Reventon and the Veneno; the design in these drawings is so outlandish, it makes the Huracan and Aventador look as mild mannered as Amy Adams in Talladega Nights, pre-Journey. And Lamborghini’s top-secret limited-run supercars have a history of sneaking out through the patent office just before their scheduled release dates; the Sesto Elemento first went public through a similar patent leak not long before the car dropped at the 2010 Paris Motor Show.
In spite of the car’s rapidly approaching date of arrival, concrete facts about the Centenario are few and far between. We’ve heard only 40 units will be sold—20 coupes and 20 roadsters—each at a cost of around $2.5 million. And that hyper-aggressive bodywork is believed to carbon fiber that will go unpainted and exposed for the world to see.
In addition to paying tribute to the 100th anniversary of Ferruccio Lamborghini’s birth, the Centenario is also expected to honor the legacy of the Miura, which basically sauntered into the sports car establishment’s dinner and flipped the table when it first showed up exactly 50 years ago in March 1966. Since the Miura came packing a V12, odds seem good the Centenario will have a 12-cylinder engine mounted between the passenger cell and the rear axle. But we’ll know for sure in a few weeks.