ECCENTRICA DROPS THE TOP ON THE DIABLO

Image: Eccentrica

A first-series Lamborghini Diablo with the roof sawn off, a former Lamborghini CTO tuning the chassis, and just 19 buyers on earth who'll ever own one. That's not a hypothetical — it's the Eccentrica V12 Roadster, and it just went public at The Quail during Monterey Car Week.

San Marino-based Eccentrica Cars has spent the last few years quietly becoming one of the most credible names in the "reimagined Diablo" space — a category that used to mean body kits and aftermarket wings, and is now, increasingly, ground-up re-engineering by people who used to build these cars for a living. Founder Emanuel Colombini calls the project a personal passion, but the technical side is led by Maurizio Reggiani , Lamborghini's former Chief Technical Officer, who oversaw development of the Murciélago, Gallardo, and Aventador during his time at Sant'Agata. That's not a marketing bullet point — that's the engineer who helped define the modern Lamborghini V12 now going back to fix the one he built thirty years ago.

The Roadster follows the brand's V12 Coupe, which Eccentrica also capped at 19 units and has been delivering to customers since last year. Every car — coupe or roadster — starts life as a genuine first-series Diablo, fully disassembled down to the steel spaceframe. From there, Eccentrica reinforces the chassis with carbon fiber and rebuilds the entire body in carbon, working with Milanese design studio Borromeo De Silva to widen the track, sharpen the proportions, and run dedicated aerodynamic studies to make sure losing the roof didn't cost the car its manners at speed. Eccentrica says more than 3,500 bespoke components go into each build, and no two cars are spec'd identically.

Image: Eccentrica

THE ENGINE IS THE WHOLE POINT

Strip away the bodywork story and the Roadster's real headline is what Eccentrica did to the original 5.7-liter, naturally aspirated V12. Colombini's team went in with a bespoke camshaft, electronic throttle bodies, a custom flywheel, a recalibrated ECU, and reworked thermal management and airflow — taking the factory engine from roughly 485 hp up to 550 hp at 7,000 rpm and 443 lb-ft (600 Nm) of torque at 6,500 rpm. It's routed through a six-speed gated manual with bespoke ratios, because in Eccentrica's words, the whole exercise is about "putting the driver closer to the sound and heat" of a naturally aspirated V12 — an experience Lamborghini itself stopped selling years ago. Zero to 62 mph comes up in 3.8 seconds, and it'll pull to 208 mph.

Eccentrica kept the steering hydraulic rather than converting to electric assist — a deliberate choice for feedback over convenience — and the exterior details lean on the Diablo's own history rather than inventing a new design language: the front bumper and wheel-arch treatment take cues from the Diablo GT, and the headlights are pop-down units (true pop-ups are no longer street-legal almost anywhere) with round LED running lights integrated into the nose.

A CABIN BUILT FOR DRIVERS

The interior is where Eccentrica's "reinterpretation, not restoration" philosophy shows up most clearly. Expect Connolly leather, Alcantara, anodized metal, and exposed carbon-fiber trim throughout, alongside a fully redesigned control layout: a custom gear lever with a white ball-top shifter, button-operated reverse, an artisan-finished steering column, bespoke switchgear, and a retro-styled amber digital gauge cluster that nods to the Diablo's original dash without copying it outright. A modern infotainment system is quietly integrated into the cabin — enough to make the car livable, without turning the experience into a touchscreen-first modern supercar. Every one of the 19 buyers works one-on-one with Eccentrica on their own spec, so no two interiors will read exactly the same.

NINETEEN CARS, ONE STATEMENT

Eccentrica is capping the V12 Roadster at 19 examples worldwide, built to order out of the San Marino headquarters, with deliveries beginning after the California debut. Pricing hasn't been officially published, but early reporting places the build somewhere in the $1.5–1.7 million range before you've sourced the donor car — echoing what the V12 Coupe reportedly commanded — meaning an all-in figure north of $2 million once a numbers-matching Diablo donor is factored in. Not one of these will be an impulse buy, and that's rather the point: this is a car built for collectors who already know exactly what they're getting into.

WHY IT MATTERS FOR COLLECTORS

The Diablo restomod space is getting crowded fast, and it's worth watching for a reason that goes beyond one Italian workshop: it's a live case study in what happens to values when a credible builder — in this case, the literal engineer behind three generations of Lamborghini V12s — puts serious talent behind a 1990s icon. Cars like this don't just create a new collectible; they tend to pull attention, and bids, back toward the clean, unmolested originals they're built from. If you've been sitting on a first-series Diablo, or you've had one on your watch list, this is exactly the kind of headline that tends to move that market.