LAMBORGHINI

Espada

The Lamborghini Espada was a striking four-seat grand touring coupe built between 1968 and 1978, and it represented Lamborghini's bold attempt to create a genuine high-performance car capable of carrying four adults in comfort. Designed by Marcello Gandini at Bertone, the low, wide and dramatically styled Lamborghini Espada drew its cues from two earlier Bertone show cars, the Lamborghini Marzal and the Bertone Pirana, giving it a futuristic glass-heavy cabin and a long, flat profile unlike anything else on the road. Launched at the 1968 Geneva Motor Show alongside the Islero, the Lamborghini Espada was powered by Lamborghini's glorious 3.9-litre quad-cam V12, mounted up front and producing 325 horsepower in the original Series I cars, enough to make this big four-seater genuinely fast. Over its ten-year run the Lamborghini Espada evolved through three distinct series: the Series I from 1968 to 1970, the Series II from 1970 to 1972 with more power and a redesigned dashboard, and the Series III from 1972 to 1978 with revised styling and the option of a Chrysler automatic gearbox. With 1,217 examples built across all three series, the Lamborghini Espada was for a long time the most successful and best-selling model Lamborghini had ever produced. Combining supercar mechanicals with everyday four-seat practicality, the Lamborghini Espada was a unique and ambitious creation, and today it stands as one of the most characterful and increasingly collectible classic Lamborghinis of the golden era.