Last year, we touched on 10 Enzo Derivatives that only REAL Ferrari fans know about. With Automobili Lamborghini celebrating 63 years earlier this month, now felt like the ideal time to spotlight and revisit some truly radical one-offs to wear the Raging Bull badge.
Where models like the Miura, Diablo, and Murcielago and concepts like the Lanzador EV and the Estoque sedan or the Sesto Elemento designed by Lamborghini Centro Stile should be familiar to most people, but the Lamborghini concept cars on this list feature coachbuilt experiments, prototypes, and factory commissions that go back decades. The signature scissor doors, synonymous with flagship Lambos, but one of the cars on this list, you have more than two. These are rare enough that only the most ardent fans of the Italian marque and those in collector car circles likely know about their existence.
1. Lamborghini Marzal (1967)
The Glass-Sided Concept That Debuted at Monaco | Units Produced: 1
Marcello Gandini was around 28 when he designed the Marzal concept car for Bertone on a stretched Miura platform. The car featured glass gull-wing doors, a hexagonal interior, and a 2.0-liter inline-six, essentially half the Miura's V12, mounted at the rear. Ferruccio Lamborghini disliked the glass doors but showed the car at Geneva anyway. On May 7, 1967, Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace of Monaco drove it as the Monaco Grand Prix pace car. Fifty-one years later, Prince Albert II lapped the same circuit in the same prototype. The Marzal sold at Villa d'Este in 2011 for €1.512 million ($2.1 million).
2. Lamborghini Bravo (1974)
Gandini's Forgotten Masterpiece | Units Produced: 1
The Urraco was a commercial disappointment, and the Bravo was Gandini's answer. Unveiled at the 1974 Turin Motor Show on a shortened Urraco P300 chassis with its 3.0-liter V8, the Bravo wrapped familiar mechanicals in bodywork that looked a decade ahead of its time: a near-flat roofline, slashed angles, and a rear treatment that derived its own aerodynamic logic. A concept that embraces the era's wedge design philosophy through and through, Gandini has named it among his personal favorites, and for a designer who also created the Miura and the Countach, that carries real weight. At the 2011 Villa d'Este auction, it sold for €588,000 (~$871,800), more than doubling its high estimate.
3. Lamborghini Athon (1980)
The Open-Top Dream Built During Lamborghini's Troubled Times | Units Produced: 1
By 1980, Lamborghini was already heading toward its second bankruptcy, but Bertone built a concept anyway. The Athon debuted at that year's Turin Motor Show as a pure open-top barchetta on the Silhouette platform, named after the Egyptian sun god. It had no targa panel and no roof, just a dramatically raked windscreen and bodywork clean enough to look machined. The relationship between Bertone and Lamborghini was never purely commercial, and the Athon proves that point clearly. It sold for €347,200 at the 2011 Villa d'Este auction and has never been replicated.
4. Lamborghini Countach Evoluzione (1987)
The Secret Carbon Fiber Prototype Nobody Knew About | Units Produced: 1
This car is probably the most consequential vehicle on this list. In 1987, Lamborghini's composites department built a Countach entirely from carbon fiber and Kevlar under Horacio Pagani, who bought his own autoclave on a personal bank loan after management refused to invest. The result weighed 980 kg, roughly 500 kg less than a production Countach, and hit 330 km/h at Nardo. Lamborghini chose not to productionize it and used the Evoluzione for a crash test instead. Its engineering fed directly into the Diablo's development, and Pagani left in 1992 to build his own legacy from the same materials.
5. Lamborghini Portofino (1987)
The Four-Door Lamborghini That Never Was | Units Produced: 1
If you thought the 2008 Estoque was the first time that Lamborghini thought about a four-door sedan, think again. This is the Portofino concept and the first of the two cars in the hero image of this article. Back in the 1980s, it began life not in Italy but in California, where Chrysler designer Kevin Verduyn was developing a four-door concept called the Navajo at the Pacifica Advanced Design studio. Chrysler acquired Lamborghini in April 1987 and revived Verduyn's design for that year's Frankfurt Motor Show. Coggiola of Turin built it on a lengthened Jalpa chassis with the Jalpa's 3.5-liter V8 and four scissor doors enclosing a pillarless cabin. Lamborghini's engineers reportedly called it the "Big Potato," though its cab-forward design language went on to directly influence the Dodge Intrepid. One prototype survives at Chrysler's headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
6. Bertone Lamborghini Genesis (1988)
The V12 Lamborghini That Bertone Built as a Six-Seat Minivan | Units Produced: 1
Bertone looked at the LM002 SUV, the minivan boom in the United States, and Chrysler's ownership of Lamborghini, and arrived at a conclusion nobody else would: a V12 minivan. The Genesis debuted at the 62nd Turin International Motor Show on April 21, 1988, designed by Marc Deschamps. It seated five, with gull-wing front doors over a front-mounted 5.2-liter V12 from the Countach Quattrovalvole, which puts out 455 horsepower, mated to a Chrysler TorqueFlite three-speed automatic. Neither Lamborghini nor Chrysler chose to take the concept further. The Urus arrived thirty years later to answer the same question, but it's hard to believe that for a coachbuilder that pretty much took the wedge shape mainstream in the exotic car space, this would be the last Lamborghini that Bertone would design.
7. Lamborghini Pregunta (1998)
The Coachbuilt Diablo That Asked All the Right Questions | Units Produced: 1
Heuliez was a French coachbuilder best known for Citroën work. In 1998, they built on a Diablo VT chassis and produced something that looks nothing like the car beneath it. The Pregunta (Spanish for "question") replaced the Diablo's pop-up headlights with a fixed arrangement and wrapped it in surfacing sharper and more futuristic than Lamborghini's own design language. A roof scoop and rear diffuser gave it the drama of a concept without the compromises of one. It passed into private ownership after its show appearances and still exists as a single driveable car and was offered at Broad Arrow's Zoute auction last year, where it sold for €2,143,750 ($2,493,312).
8. Lamborghini Egoista (2013)
A Lambo that takes inspiration from a stealth helicopter | Units Produced: 1
Walter de Silva was head of design for the Volkswagen Group when he built the Egoista as a personal tribute to Lamborghini's 50th anniversary. It has a single seat and a fighter jet canopy that lifts forward for entry, with an Apache helicopter-inspired cockpit made from carbon fiber and aluminum. A 5.2-liter V10 from the Gallardo produces 600 horsepower, and the bodywork is coated in radar-absorbent material. The name means "selfish" in Italian, and Lamborghini wore it with complete conviction. Placed in the Lamborghini museum immediately after its reveal, the Egoista has never been offered for sale.
9. Lamborghini 5-95 Zagato (2014)
Zagato's Anniversary Commission on the Gallardo Superleggera | Units Produced: 1
Unveiled at the Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza in May 2014, the 5-95 was a bespoke commission built by Zagato to mark the coachbuilder's 95th anniversary. Based on the Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera, it retained the 5.2-liter V10 that produces 570 horsepower while replacing everything above the chassis with Zagato-designed bodywork. The commission came from an American collector and stands as one of the very few modern Lamborghinis to carry coachbuilt bodywork from an outside house. Zagato built only a single example, and it passed directly into private ownership after its Villa d'Este debut.
10. Lamborghini Terzo Millennio (2017)
The Self-Healing Electric Concept Built With MIT | Units Produced: 1
The Terzo Millennio, Italian for Third Millennium, was developed in collaboration with MIT and unveiled in November 2017 as Lamborghini's most ambitious attempt to define what an electric hypercar could mean for the brand. It carried no combustion engine and no traditional battery pack. Energy was stored in supercapacitors embedded within the carbon fiber body panels, with four electric motors driving individual wheel hubs. The most radical element was the self-healing body: carbon nanotubes woven into the panels could detect micro-cracks and repair structural damage using electrical current. Lamborghini confirmed from the outset that no production version was ever planned.
View All Lamborghinis for Sale
Images: Lamborghini
