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Geneva Motor Show

Buy the weirdest Lambo concept ever

Published: 11 Dec 2013

At the 1991 Geneva Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz unveiled the next generation of its venerable S-Class, the ‘W140'. It was a tech-fest of innovation (double-paned soundproof glass, anyone?) and previewed the company's new design theme.

At that same show, a little know Japanese tuner unveiled the first generation of what he planned as a small production run of the Lamborghini ‘Sogna'. It was not a tech-fest of innovation, and it did not preview Lamborghini's new design theme. It was a V12-engined, hand-crafted one-off fantasy. In green. And now it's coming up for sale.

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The Sogna was the brainchild of Japanese designer Ryoji Yamazaki, boss of the Art & Tech studio. At 13, he had a dream about a supercar; at 41, he made it, and luckily for us, it wasn't one of ‘those' dreams (Sogna, incidentally, is Italian for ‘dreams').

So he bought a Lamborghini Countach and constructed an entirely new body from aluminium, painted it green and wheeled it out for the '91 Geneva show, with the intention of entering the Sogna into limited production. That never materialised, but a few years later another Sogna, this time a fully-functioning prototype, was built for the 1994 Essen Motor Show. It's this one you can now buy.

It's not an official Lamborghini model, obviously, which is why you get that bonkers bodyshell, but underneath Yamazaki retained the Countach's running gear, so it's still a 5.2-litre V12-engined supercar with 455bhp all running riot through the rear axle. Top speed was a reported 186mph. Though you'd have to be mighty brave to attempt that on an autobahn.

Check out the listing at JamesEdition.com - the same JamesEdition.com that is hawking out five Merc Vision GTs - and let us know if you had the means, would you consider it? It's a whopping £1.9m. Or a McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder.

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Images via JamesEdition.com

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