Auto News 5

Ezra dyer got to go to Rome to drive Lamborghini's latest flagship, the Aventador, which replaces the Murcielago. A week before he flew to Italy, I am at the Monticello Motor Club 100 miles northwest of Manhattan to drive the two latest versions of the Aventador's smaller sibling, the Gallardo. Rome is nice, but the swanky, members-only, Monticello track is no slum, and I don't have to worry about jet lag, just clipping apexes correctly. Also, the Gallardo might not be the latest and greatest Lamborghini, but the LP550-2 Bicolore and the LP570-4 Spyder Performante are the latest and greatest Gallardos. The Gallardo, for its part, is the best-selling Lamborghini of all time. More than 10,000 of them have been sold worldwide since the car debuted at the 2003 Geneva Motor Show, its sales buttressed by a carefully orchestrated rollout of new models designed to tempt rich guys who cannot resist the latest Italian baubles. There is a group of such rich guys, specially invited by Lamborghini, waiting in the Monticello canteen for the peasant scribes to finish our morning drive so they can take the wheels of the LP550-2 Bicolore and LP570-4 Spyder Performante test cars, assuming we don't destroy them first. One of these guys tells me he already owns a Gallardo coupe; another tells me he owns a Ferrari F430 Spider. If they are surprised that they have to wait for the likes of us to finish driving before they are allowed out on the track, they are polite enough not to show it.

Exactly five years after I first drove the Acura RDX, I find that it is not aging well. The turbocharged engine delivers decent power, but it's not linear in its delivery, and the five-speed automatic is a dated device. The ride-and-handling balance is ho-hum, and the suspension crashes over bumps. The steering is dead on-center. There's a distinct lack of a "premium" feeling to the RDX, especially when compared with the newer entries in this segment like the Volvo XC60, the Audi Q5, the Mercedes-Benz GLK, and the BMW X3. Heck, there are small crossovers from non-premium brands that feel more of-a-piece than the RDX does, like the Chevy Equinox, the Hyundai Santa Fe, and the Volkswagen Tiguan. The RDX is definitely overdue for a re-do.