Hidden treasures: a little-known Lamborghini gets set for auction

Some car brands have an emotional resonance that extends far beyond the reach of the end product. If you do not care very much for cars, you probably don’t know the first thing about how a Porsche goes about its business compared to rival brands. But you know what a Porsche represents, and everyone has a view on the sort of person that drives one.

There used to be loads of car brands that provoked an almost entirely negative response. Skoda spent many of the later years of the 20th century enduring a series of jokes about how buying one of their cars made you a massive cheapskate who had signed up to a lifetime of disappointment.

Skoda eventually put a stop to this partly by introducing go-faster spoilers and exciting engines, but mainly by making cars that didn’t have a habit of leaving you stranded by the roadside.

These days, all new cars are good in their basic functions: they can all get you from one place to another in relative comfort with a very low risk of mechanical meltdown. You don’t have bad cars, but you do have plenty of boring ones. Back in the 1960s things were very different, with quality and reliability very far from guaranteed, and road safety measures still very much in their infancy.

And yet you look at car advertisements from the 1960s and they are not about safety and practicality, they are all about escapism and excitement. They were selling a dream of cars that would give you freedom not just to get somewhere else, but to be someone else.

No company sold the dream with more style than Lamborghini, which started making sports cars in the 1960s after the Italian tractor maker Ferruccio Lamborghini decided he could do a better job than his soon-to-be former friend Enzo Ferrari.

Mr Lamborghini didn’t make cars so they could go around a racetrack quickly, he made cars that would go every bit as fast as the roads would allow, yet look and sound incredible whatever speed you were travelling. Along the way there have been several cars which have become household names, like the Miura and the Countach from the early years, and the Gallardo and Aventador from the modern era.

Not every car is a peach. Have a Google at the Lamborghini Jarama, a 1970s attempt at the lucrative US market. It was designed by Marcello Gandini – the genius behind the Miura and the Countach, among other lovelies – and yet somehow the Jarama ended up looking like it is trying to cover its own face in shame.

One lesser-known gem in the Lamborghini back catalogue is the Islero, the car pictured here. It is powered by the same glorious V12 engine as all early Lamborghinis, within a sleek two-plus-two body that is restrained in design compared to its stablemates. That said, it is still very striking, and is certainly a thing of unfathomable allure compared to the Jarama, which replaced it in the Lambo line-up.

The Islero is also incredibly rare, with just 225 examples produced across two versions. So it may not be the best-known model, but it is every bit a Lamborghini, with all the Latin glory that the name evokes, and the added bonus that running into someone with the same car is only likely if you are a member of an extremely exclusive owners’ club.

The 1969 Lamborghini Islero is lot 55 in the Artcurial Rétromobile sale in Paris on Friday 9th February 2018. Estimate €180,000 - €240,000, artcurial.com