Sexy, Sensual, Fluid, Exotic and just enough curves, the Lamborghini Gallardo

needed constant tooling and tweeking since Italian men may have simply been using the reliable car as an excuse to get away from their women or pursue other ladies in their quest to find an obscure spare part in the busy metropolis, far away from the friendly villagers in the rural towns that dotted the countryside.

Perhaps as portrayed in a few recent movies in Hollywood, tweeking the Fiat was a means of social bonding between men - avoiding talking about their

household and deftly deflecting the topic of conversation to automotive woes as a starter for gossip about town, the local economy and politics, just as today watching a football or basketball game and drinking a few beers is a way of shooting the breeze.

Some of us have considered the possibility that the early Fiats - the 1100 series, following the Second World War, were as reliable or solid as the best cars of their era, just like the small runabout Renault 8 and the Citroen 2CV

of their era. How else would you justify the survival of this carrmaker and its successful export to some parts of the world ahead of German, English and French cars? And yet the reputation of Fiat, as a carmaker, stuck with any outside of Italy as a forerunner to the developers of the Yugo (of the 1990s).

With Lamborghini now part of the VW portfolio, hopes soared amongst the latest generation of high octane speed demons that the fabled monster would not be another dream car to come

alive in posters and sexy centerfold layouts - for admiring on your bedroom wall, to be framed in the living room and work cubicle, that automotive masterpieces such as the Murcielago or Gallardo may be whipped into shape and would find themselves at a $30,000 price point in many owners' garages that have always loved the Italian flair for design and their passion for style and wanted badly to show off owners of Camaro and Mustang a new piece of muscle car from the old country.