1995 LAMBORGHINI DIABLO

Chassis RLA12086, ‘B4 BUL’, the eighty-sixth Diablo SE30 built and one of just 18 in right-hand drive, was originally commissioned by the Brunei Royal Family as a birthday gift for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Finished in Rosso Bordeaux over Senape, its specification was unusually restrained for a car destined for the Sultan’s collection. The order was never completed. The car was finished in January 1995, but by December had instead been billed to Lamborghini GB and sold new to marque enthusiast Robin Fowler.

Fowler first saw the car during a visit to the Sant’Agata factory with Lamborghini’s sales director, Giuseppe Girotti, and secured its purchase after tracking down company president Mike Kimberly on a Sunday morning. The car went on to compete at concours events across Europe and the UK, winning the Lamborghini Club UK national concours—a notable result for such a young car at the time.

It has also appeared on Top Gear and undergone one of the more memorable tests a privately owned SE30 has received, when Auto Italia magazine pitted it and an ex-Mario Andretti Formula 1 car against an RAF Tornado fighter jet in a straight-line contest at RAF Cottesmore.

B4 BUL was purchased by its second owner in February of 2022, and treated to a mechanical service by marque specialist Carrera Sport, who have carried out 13 of the car’s 15 recorded services. Since then, it has been used only for special occasions, including a road trip from Surrey to Le Mans to celebrate the SE30’s approaching thirtieth birthday; a fitting outing for a car built to mark Lamborghini’s own thirtieth anniversary three decades earlier.

It remains one of the most historically interesting SE30s in existence; a car once destined for one of the world’s most extravagant collections, and now a well-documented piece of Lamborghini’s anniversary story.