While we wait for a snowed-in parking lot to appear so that we can go have fun in our rides, the well-heeled can go test their winter-driving mettle (or simply learn how to drive in the stuff) in one of three high-end winter towns that will host the 2015 Lamborghini Winter Accademia. Wrap your heads around that for a moment: Lamborghini, a car company that is more known for their stratospheric top speeds, stop-traffic looks and has named most of their cars after dangerous bulls (and one that loosely translates into “holy shit!”, something I wouldn’t be driving in the snow anytime soon), thinks it’s a great idea to let people drive on snow and ice courses cars that can have up to 700hp on tap that cost about the same as a very nice house.
Ok, while the snowball in Hell has a better chance of survival than we do getting onto the guest list for this event, we have to stand back and be impressed. Not so much at the ability of the Lamborghinis to take to the snow, but that the company is willing to let the buying public actually drive. The school…er, accademia, is set up in two formats: Intensivo, which is a one-day course that focuses on dynamic driving technique and performance control, and Avanzato, a two-day course that is meant to teach drivers “how to get the maximum from the car.” Normally, a driver trying to extract the maximum from a Lambo in the snow is the backstory for one of Brian’s Copart Cadaver stories, but here it involves one-on-one coaching and mentoring, as well as video telemetry and reviews for each driver.
The schools will be held in Aspen, Colorado, Livigno, Italy and Nagano, Japan. It’s a shame they aren’t holding it in a Nordic country…we have a few friends that could teach the Lamborghini drivers a thing or two.
