Lamborghini’s La Prima Is for Its VIP Clients. Here’s What to Expect.

Picking up your factory-fresh Lamborghini from Sant’Agata Bolognese is the stuff of automotive fantasy, but this is even more special. Less than one percent of the marque’s customers get invited to La Prima, a private car-collection ceremony that is as exciting and theatrical as Lamborghini itself. I strap on a pair of Apple Vision Pro goggles and gingerly take a seat. The room is plunged into darkness as a pounding drumbeat grows steadily more intense.

I’ve been invited to Italy to experience a day as one of Lamborghini’s VIP customers. A packed agenda includes designing my dream car in the Ad Personam studio, exploring Lamborghini’s latest tech using augmented reality, a tour of the Revuelto and Temerario production facility, then finally the exclusive La Prima handover. The only downside is that I can’t drive “my” supercar home afterward.

After a breakfast of pastries and a rocket-fuel Italian espresso, I’m ushered into a meeting with Stephan Winkelmann. Lamborghini’s sharp-suited CEO is in a confident mood, buoyed by the company’s record sales and the arrival of the new V-8-hybrid Temerario. “There are two main reasons to buy a Lamborghini: design and performance,” he says. And it’s design that has pushed up profits, with 26 percent of buyers now opting for some level of Ad Personam customization—up from only eight percent in 2019.

Ad Personam is Lamborghini’s answer to Ferrari Tailor Made, Q by Aston Martin, or McLaren Special Operations (MSO). It has studios around the world—including in New York, Miami, Tokyo, and London—where you can configure a car in person, helped by an expert who is well versed in all the options available. 

The largest studio is right here in Sant’Agata Bolognese. Inside, it looks like a luxurious loft apartment, albeit one with a matte-black Lamborghini Revuelto lurking in the corner. A closer inspection reveals its many Ad Personam extras, including flashes of Ora Alba “chameleon” paint that catch the light, glowing gold from some angles and lurid pink from others. If Bruce Wayne and Barbie co-created a supercar, this is how it might look. 

After another strong coffee, I sit down with Viktor Wurmboeck, head of configurations for Ad Personam. ”There’s an unwritten rule that you shouldn’t have more than three colors on the exterior of the car,” he says. “We can create almost anything here, although I have a kind of veto if the result looks too messy. We try to protect the value of the brand.” 

I begin work on my Revuelto, using an iPad to manipulate the image on a huge, wall-sized screen. Ignoring most of Lamborghini’s 400 off-the-shelf paint colors, I quickly decide on Viola SE30—the same shade of purple as the Diablo SE30 on my bedroom wall in the 1990s (and the Diablo in Jamiroquai’s famous “Cosmic Girl” music video). Wurmboeck seems to approve.

You can also customize the Revuelto’s exposed carbon-fiber parts—such as the splitter, door mirrors, side sills, engine cover, and diffuser—with a shiny or matte finish. I choose the former, then add bronze pinstripes to highlight the car’s extremities, plus a set of polished, bronze-accented alloy wheels. An Italian Tricolore flag on the underside of the pop-up rear spoiler is the finishing touch. Too messy? My host looks a little conflicted.

“We offer four levels of Ad Personam,” Wurmboeck explains. “Level one is using the configurator, then level two can include custom colors or effects, like vertical or horizontal paint fades” (he nods to a Temerario parked outside with a graduated black-to-green paint finish). “Beyond that, we have one-shot requests, then Ad Personam level four uses unique, non-automotive materials. Our most expensive request was for paint mixed with real diamond powder, at €250,000 (approximately $299,700) plus taxes. But remember, any new material still has to meet Volkswagen Group quality standards. Lamborghini performs all the same durability tests as VW does on a new Golf.”

I add a liberal quantity of Viola leather to my Revuelto’s interior, including matching purple stitching, then sit back to admire my work. I think the schoolboy who idolized the Diablo SE30 would approve—and Wurmboeck hasn’t used his veto yet either. Theoretically, I am now ready to place a deposit, then the next step is to download Lamborghini’s customer-only Unica app to keep track of my car. The order bank currently stretches to two years for a Revuelto, 18 months for a Temerario, and around a year for a Urus SUV. Good things come to those who wait, I guess.

“When your car has been assembled, you will receive a photo of it leaving the production line,” says Filippo Tonutti, the man in charge of Lamborghini’s “next generation customer journey.” The Unica app also allows owners to access their vehicle remotely, check its service history, and share footage from the in-car dashcams and telemetry system (introduced on the Huracán STO and now optional on the Temerario). 

Once the initial excitement of collecting your supercar or SUV wears off, Unica helps owners to stay connected, with details of driving tours, track days, and Super Trofeo race meetings—not forgetting new vehicles in stock at their local Lamborghini dealer. As an added perk, the app’s 41,000 users can enjoy a “digital unveiling” of all new Lamborghini models, which takes place several hours before the car is revealed to the public.

We wander across to the secretive Centro Stile design studio, where many famous Lamborghinis have taken shape. The futuristic new Manifesto concept car is here, alongside beautifully detailed scale models from Sant’Agata’s past: a classic Countach and one-off Aventador J roadster. Colorful sketches by chief designer Mitja Borkert line the walls, alongside the signatures of famous visitors. I even spot a $20,000 carbon-fiber triathlon bike, a collaboration between Centro Stile and bicycle maker Cervelo. 

Now it’s time to see beneath the surface using augmented reality. Lamborghini first used this technology when it launched the Temerario at Monterey Car Week in 2024, but the software—combining real and digitally generated images—is already helping customers to better understand these complicated cars. 

Pulling on a pair of Apple Vision Pro googles, I face a bright yellow Temerario and prod a virtual button on a floating menu. As if by magic, the car’s body panels disappear, revealing the skeletal aluminum spaceframe below. Another button shows the inner workings of the twin-turbo V-8 engine and electric front axle. You can even watch the airflow around the car at speed, thanks to graphics created using real computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data. For all my efforts with purple paint, it’s a reminder that car design is as much about engineering as aesthetics. 

After a typically long Italian lunch at a local restaurant, I am whisked back to Sant’Agata for a factory tour. On the walls are photos dating back to 1963, when tractor-maker Ferruccio Lamborghini first decided to take on Ferrari. The black-and-white images of the 350 GT, Miura, and Countach being hand-built here—often at a rate of less than one car per day—are wonderfully evocative, but the assembly hall also looks dusty and disorganized. 

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Not anymore. Bolstered by Volkswagen’s investment, the Lamborghini factory is now bright, modern, and clinically clean. It produces 10 Revueltos and 20 Temerarios per day, while the facility next door builds 28 examples of the Urus SE in the same period. Many tasks are still completed by hand, from sewing the dashboard leather to bolting in suspension components, but automated electric transports are used to deliver parts and move vehicles between workstations. When they leave the line, the cars enter a tunnel of dazzling white fluorescent lights, where they are closely inspected for any imperfections.  

Finally, it’s time to take delivery, so I head upstairs to a glass-walled room overlooking the factory and meet Domenico Beccia, the man who hosts La Prima collections. “We do about 80 of these handovers each year,” he tells me. “When people tell you their stories, it’s very emotional. They might have experienced a tough childhood, then built a successful life through determination. Now they feel ready to reward themselves with a Lamborghini. Many of our customers end up in tears—and sometimes I do as well.”

Donning the A/R goggles again, I watch a personalized video and see a Revuelto materialize before my eyes in a blaze of light and color. Then, when I remove my eyewear, the real thing is right there, parked in exactly the same position. I’m presented with a color-matched key in a carbon-fiber presentation box, a framed collage of photos from my day in Sant’Agata, and a 1:18 scale model of this exact car. OK, this isn’t the purple Revuelto I dreamed up a few hours ago, but it’s the thought that counts. “We work in the Italian way, taking time with no rush,” says Domenico with a smile.  

An exhilarating day ends with dinner amidst the cars in the on-site Lamborghini Museum. Highlights of the collection include the Countach LP 400 prototype that wowed the world in 1974, an LM002 off-roader, a one-of-83 Diablo GT, and the carbon-bodied Sesto Elemento.

Indeed, after five courses, another espresso, and 14 hours immersed in all things Lamborghini, I feel quite ready to saddle up a Raging Bull and gallop off into the sunset. Sadly, a flight home to London Heathrow in the morning will have to suffice. I don’t have the means to join Lamborghini’s one percent yet, but we can all dream. And I’ll be doing just that tonight.

Click here for more photos from Lamborghini’s La Prima experience.