You Can Buy One of Lamborghini's Coolest Concept Cars. If You Have $4 Million
The 1990s were a great time for concept cars. Go to any auto show, and you’d see incredible flights of fancy from mainstream automakers and design houses alike. One of the coolest concept cars ever is coming up for sale in a month, and it’s almost a guarantee you’ll win any show you bring it to. Oh, and it’s got the same paint as a fighter jet.
For the 1998 Paris Motor Show, Lamborghini collaborated with French coachbuilder Heuliez to create the Diablo-based Pregunta. The design is the work of Marc Deschamps, who Lamborghini design legend Marcello Gandini mentored while they were both at Bertone. Deschamps worked on legends like the Volvo Tundra concept, Renault 5 Turbo, and Lamborghini Jalpa.
Deschamps took inspiration from the French Dassault Rafale fighter jet. The carbon-fiber bodywork is finished in the same matte gray paint, and the wraparound canopy windshield is meant to evoke the Rafale. The interior was high-tech for the time, with a Magnetti Marelli digital gauge cluster, fiber-optic lighting, rearview cameras, and a navigation system.
But this is still an old-school supercar, with the Diablo’s 5.7-liter V-12 tweaked for 530 horsepower and sending all that to the rear wheels only via a five-speed manual transmission. Broad Arrow, which is selling the Pregunta, says it’s drivable, too.
While the design is fighter-jet-inspired, it’s also distinctly Lamborghini. The Diablo’s unusual mechanical layout of transmission ahead of engine defines this, but so too does Deschamps’ pen. The rising belt line and scissor doors are pure Lamborghini, but through a different filter than what we’re used to.
Lamborghini debuted the Pregunta just a month after Audi acquired the company. So, in a way, this represents the end of an era. Every concept car that came after it informed the next generation of Lambos, Murcielago and Gallardo.
Heuliez kept the Pregunta for a couple of years, displaying it at various events before selling it to a collector in 2008. In 2021, Lamborghini serviced and certified the car, then put it on display in its museum.
Broad Arrow will sell the Pregunta at its auction at the Zoute concours in Belgium on October 10th. The auction house estimates it’ll fetch around $3 to $4 million. Way more than pretty much any other Diablo, but unique. Truly, you won’t see another.
Gallery: 1998 Lamborghini Pregunta Concept
