Lamborghini says it currently offers 400 different colors to its customers through its in-house customization program, Ad Personam. Some of these colors, however, have more history than others. Lamborghini will happily paint your new Revuelto, Urus, or other in Verde Scandal, a decades-old hue with arguably more history than many of the other colors offered through the Ad Personam program. The color is one of the oldest on the brand’s roster, dating back to the Miura, and it has an interesting story behind it.
Verde Scandal Dates Back To The Original Supercar
The story is, predictably, an utterly ridiculous one, wholly unverifiable. It takes place in the late 1960s, when exactly Lamborghini isn’t sure, just after the introduction of the Miura. The V12 supercar was a real success for the company, and even then, customers were allowed a degree of customization not typically offered by automakers. After all, this is only a few decades off from Henry Ford’s famous “you can have any color as long as it’s black” mantra.
The legend goes that a woman (surely straight from Botticelli’s canvas) walked into Lamborghini’s factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese. The Italian Venus, probably clad in a large-brimmed sunhat with equally sizable Gucci sunglasses, asked for a Miura in a color the company didn’t offer. More specifically, the same as the dress she was wearing: a verdant shade of green. Of course, the company representative would need a sample, a mere swatch on which to base this color, and asked kindly for one. The woman left sans dress, or so says the story.
1960s “Scandal” Led To This Color’s Name
The name, Verde Scandal, is derived from this story. It’s about as believable as a campaign-trail promise, but nonetheless, it spawned the name for a color we’ve seen countless times in Lamborghini history. Who knows, this Muira pictured here could be the one owned by the Italian Venus from the story. Laughable though the story may be, it is a great color, and one often featured on the brand’s cars, and in other places, too. It has even worked its way beyond Lamborghini, with the company granting Ducati the rights to use the limey shade on its Panigale V4 motorcycle.
TopSpeed’s Take
The story of the partially nude Lamborghini customer is almost certainly pure fantasy. It’s also not a particularly entertaining one, but the color did do one thing for Lamborghini, regardless of how it got made: it brought the company a reputation for loud, boisterous colors that continues to this day. It’s tough to think of another supercar that is so closely related to an explosion of colors like Lamborghini, and that’s arguably more important than some farcical dress-swatch ceremony.
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