The Lamborghini Egoista is an exercise in self-indulgence

Here are some things you should know about the Lamborghini Egoista concept, which has made quite a splash since its debut as part of Lamborghini's 50th anniversary celebration:

1. Enjoying the Egoista's 5.2-liter V10 with a reported output of 600 hp will always be a lonely affair. The car is a one-seater.

2. The Egoista's heads-up display, steering yoke and canopy are meant to evoke the cockpit of a jet fighter. Interior distractions are kept to a bare minimum. Its stereo system would only ever play “Danger Zone,” if it had a stereo system (apparently, it doesn't).

3. Exterior styling goes a step further than the Reventon's F-22 Raptor-inspired lines, at times crossing in to extraterrestrial territory. Apparently aware of this, Lamborghini refers to the Egoista as a “four-wheeled UFO,” which doesn't even make sense. Unless the car can fly; even then, though, it's hardly unidentified.

4. Hey, we've seen the Egoista's totally rad orange accent color before…was Lamborghini designer Walter De Silva a Lego maniac? We hope so.

5. None of us will ever own the Egoista. An official press release calls the concept “…a car for itself, a gift from Lamborghini to Lamborghini, resplendent in its solitude.” That's one of the more poetic lines we've read in a press release lately; we didn't realize Lamborghini was capable of such introspection.

It's hard not to feel a bit cynical about Lambo's latest whiz-bang concept, especially since the automaker has been quite open about its nature as an unrestrained exercise in self-indulgence.

It's also hard not to love the car's spaceship-like form. It's absurd, yes, but it's also honest -- Lamborghini named it Egoista, which is Italian for “selfish,” for a reason. The concept reduces the super-ultra-hypercar (what prefix are we at today?) to its purest form: There's nothing here but the driver and the result of what happens when you throw restrictions to the wind and let designers and engineers have their way.

If any of that spirit makes it into Lamborghini's more marketable offerings, the company's next 50 years should be pretty good.

By Graham Kozak