Factory Visit

Sameer · 2007-02-16 08:32:36

My wife and I arrived at Bologna and stayed at the Grand Baglioni hotel. I would recommend anyone of you'll to stay there. Good 5 star hotel with fantastic food. Next morning, we were picked up by the Automobili Lamborghini factory chaufer in their Audi A8. Pretty decent car. Arrived the factory at about 11am. We were taken around the museum which I'm sure many of you'll have seen photos off it in many forums. Later we were taken around in the factory to show us the start to finish line for the development of the Gallardo and Murcielago. Strictly no photos there. The guide that took us around was Christine. She was pretty impressed with my knowledge of Lamborghini of which I owe you guys from this forum and Lambo Power. Now comes the best part, yes LUNCH WITH THE MAN-VALENTINO BALBONI. He's a thorough gentleman. We had lunch with him and the public relations woman Francesca Spagna(who is a great person to deal and speak with). Lunch was just perfect and I just could not wipe the grin of my face. My whole purpose to the factory visit was to meet Mr Valentino. I got him to autograph on the photos of my Murcie and a book I bought from the factory merchandie store. Than guess what, Mr Valentino offered to take us for a ride down the Balboni Highway. This was the ride of my life. He took us with the top down on the highway, floored it to about 220km/hr on the straights and hit on the brakes just before the turns, the car oversteered and he corrected it. All this at such a high speed with on comming traffic on the opposite lane effortlesly. Mind you, the roads were quite narrow. Those of you who have been there would know what I'm speaking about. All I coud hear was the engine screaming away behind me with the nice cold strong wind at those speeds. His driving is phenomenal. I have sat in with good drivers who work pretty hard to get the car to slide, oversteer and correct it but with Mr Valentino, he did it all so effortlesly and the whole scenario just seemed so relax. Everything was so quick accept him. It's one visit which I would not mind doing again and which I know I will end up doing in the future. Hope you'll enjoy the few photos I'm posting here.