Car and Driver was able to sit down with Lamborghini and discuss its future business model. Lamborghini recently (2007) rearranged its priorities for the development stages of its new supercars and supercar variants. Its focus used to be on design, top speed, acceleration, and handling in that order. Now top speed and handling have flip-flopped, so its new emphases are on design, handling, acceleration, and lastly top speed. That’s not to say that Lamborghinis of the future will be slower, but the company has realized that it cannot prod the top-speed envelope more than it already has.

Despite Lamborghini not listing fuel economy and emissions as one of its prerogatives, it is still an important part of the design process for the exotic-car manufacturer. In Europe, Lamborghini has to reduce its overall emissions by 35 percent by 2015. A large portion—20 percent—has already been achieved via direct fuel injection in the V-10 of the LP560-4 but Lamborghini says the next 15 percent will be harder to obtain. Lamborghini is hoping that friction reduction and direct injection in the Murcielago’s V-12 will help it meet that hurdle. The use of light-weight materials (like carbon fiber) will also help by lowering the amount of mass the engines have to move.

An interesting note is that Lamborghini is looking at stop/start technology, cylinder deactivation, E85 compatibility, and even hybrid solutions to help it retain its high-performance levels while obtaining better emissions and fuel economy.

Lamborghini also conceded that manual transmissions may not be a part of the company’s distant future. Ferrari has shown that it is willing to go down the same road when it introduced the California and 458 Italia without the option of a manual transmission—although the California will obtain one in the near future. This is in direct opposition to what some purists say (we say “say” because manual transmissions only account for less than five percent of Lamborghini sales) they want and what rivals like Porsche are doing. Porsche is unwilling to offer the PDK transmission on its track-ready cars like the 911 GT3, instead only offering a manual transmission if not just for the weight savings but the complete control derived from a clutch pedal and manual gate.

[via Car and Driver]