One-of-two Lamborghini Diablo VT Roadster for sale
Maybe the ideal donor for an Eccentrica commission - or pretty darn wonderful all on its own...
Occasionally something restomod adjacent will remind you of a forgotten gem, or show off that latent potential that had been left untapped for years. That hasn’t really been the case for Lamborghini Diablo by Eccentrica, the Roadster version of which was seen at Monterey Car Week. Because the Diablo was a bigger '90s pin-up than Pamela Anderson, the very definition of supercar silliness with its speed, shape and sound. Nobody has ever let the Diablo slip their mind, not for a moment.
But it also became a key model in Lamborghini’s transition, a significant part of the Sant’Agata story as well as the supercar many have lusted after for 30-odd years. In the Diablo’s lifetime, Lamborghini went from a slightly perilous financial position under Chrysler (and then the Malaysian-Indonesian consortium in the mid-'90s) to the safe embrace of Audi. The Diablo was a constant throughout, and towards the end of its life as a GT previewed what was to come from the future. And the future looked very good indeed. From the end of the Diablo to the present day, it’s been an astonishing quarter of a century for Lamborghini.
Between the history and the Eccentrica, then, there’s probably renewed interest in Diablos of late. It has the Bizzarini V12, it has the Gandini design, it looks like a supercar sketched in a textbook brought to life on a set of split rims. Lots of people want Diablos (for very good reason), and there aren’t as many to go around as for later Lambos. With Miura and Countach prices having soared, it was only a matter of time before the Diablo followed.
From early 5.7s to 6.0 GTs, every Diablo is notable, but this one is top tier even by those extraordinary standards. It’s a Roadster for one thing, the rarer, even more attention-grabbing one as well as Lambo’s first open production car; there was never a ‘standard’ Diablo with the removable carbon top, all VT spec with four-wheel drive. As a 1998 car, this is one of the last of around 200 ever made, with only about 30 RHD examples believed to exist.
It gets better, too. Obviously the colour won’t have escaped your attention: it’s Viola, one of the most loved of all the Diablo colours, but one reserved for the SE30. That mystique is part of the reason why it’s so admired. But this isn’t an SE30. Instead, it’s one of just two VT Roadsters in Viola, a privilege afforded to a couple of VIP customers back in the day to make their Diablos extra special. The first owner of this one also went for SE30 aero bits, a sports exhaust, the nose lift and wheels.
So it looks even more spectacular than the rest, complete with purple piping and even purple font for the firing order. Three and a half decades since the world first saw a Diablo, it remains impossible not to stop and stare when presented with one. On top of the spec, this VT benefits from just two former keepers (the most recent for almost 20 years), fewer than 25,000 miles and stacks of history. One for the ages, basically. And the price for a Diablo like no other? £650k, right in the ballpark for these in 2026. If a heck of a lot less than a Viola SE30 will cost…
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff