Lamborghini’s most insane concepts

"A lady's legs would be there for all to see." That was Ferruccio Lamborghini's major beef with the Marzal concept's gullwing doors, which had a glass panel below the waistline.

Nevertheless, he pushed it into the fray at the 1967 Geneva motor show, showing off the company's inaugural four-seat super GT. Which is nice. It also paved the way for the wonderfully rubbish Espada.

With characteristic restraint and moderation, Lambo named the Bravo after a breed of BIG FIGHTING BULL. It lunged onto the launch pad at the Turin motor show in 1974, but its debut coincided with an energy crisis. Rarely conducive to supercar sales...

Lambo did save a lot of the design features of the 300bhp V8 Bravo for the Countach, though. And we like that a lot, even if it's impossible to park.

By 1980, Lambo forgot all about the seventies' energy crisis and gave us this - a massive shouty GT. With no roof.

It was an Urraco underneath - the very same Lambo James bought for not a lot of money in Series 7 - but had Bertone bodywork, semi-matte paint and state-of-the-eighties digital dashboard.

Bit of a weird one, this - the Portofino concept was originally built by Kevin Verduyn for Chrysler, but it never got beyond the clay model stage. Then the US giant took over Lamborghini so it was dusted off, slightly recarved and fitted with new badges (they had a bull inside the Chrysler logo).

It sat on a Lamborghini Jalpa chassis - lengthened by 66cm to allow space for four seats - and had Very Odd Doors. The fronts opened like a Countach's and the rears were back-hinged and opened upwards so there was no door sill. Which sounds wobbly. It worked, though, and was tested at 149mph.

This was meant to be a bargain-basement volume seller for Lambo. Trouble was, it fitted an aluminium monocoque chassis, carbon fibre body and developed the 186mph V10 engine in-house, which meant things got a bit pricey.

It did cut back on its cooling systems, though - the P140 suffered chronic overheating problems so the project was canned.

Four months before the '96 Geneva motor show, then-Lambo CEO, Michael Kimberly, phoned up Zagato and asked the coachbuilders to throw together an 'eye catcher'. This is it.

Under the carbon body there's a tubular steel chassis, Diablo VT engine and four-wheel drive mechanicals.

Retro pastiches are usually a bit rubbish, but Lambo nailed the Miura concept, which was built to celebrate the original car's 40th birthday.

It's a Murciélago underneath with modified husk penned by Lamborghini design chief, Walter de'Silva . But it won't be built: when it was launched at the Palay Centre for Media in New York, Lamborghini president and CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, said: "The Miura was a celebration of our history, but Lamborghini is about the future. Retro design is not what we are here for. So we won't do the Miura."

Spoilsport.

Introducing the world's most anti-social supercar - the Concept S. Designed by Lambo designer, Coty Haviland, who was presumably having a row with his other half at the time, it uses a Gallardo's underpants and was built to doff its cap to the single-seat roadsters of yore.

The twin-seater's not just design flagellation, though - the pointy bit between the front screens serves as an air inlet for the mid-mounted 5.0-litre V10 engine.

Now learn how the Aventador J came to be