On a recent Saturday morning, the sun shone bright over Supercar Saturdays Florida, a monthly event for exotic car lovers at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida.
These people go ga-ga for the most over-the-top luxury sports cars that your money can buy — assuming you have $250,000 to burn and $5,000 for an annual tuneup. Don’t forget to put aside $2,000 for a set of tires.
The only things shinier than the South Florida winter sky were the candy-colored paint jobs — blazing shades of yellow, green and purple — on the spear-sharp road rockets arrayed in neat rows in one particular section of a vast parking lot filled with exotic automobile nameplates.
We’re talking Lamborghini, baby, the Italian marca that’s become South Florida’s supercar sweetheart. Think flash and cash, and you get the picture.
The U.S. is Lamborghini’s biggest market in the world, and Florida now comes in second to California for the number of the vehicles sold annually. And many of these high-powered cars in the area are owned by Miami-Dade and Broward county drivers.
Sure, you could get a Ferrari, another local fave. But Enzo Ferrari’s offspring can come off as staid next to a lime green Aventador with scissor doors. Ferrari owners, comparatively traditionalist, seem to prefer theirs in black, red or white, though the brand has expanded its color palette.
But on that Saturday morning earlier this month there were more colors of Lamborghinis than come in a Crayola box, all of them brought to Gulfstream to be shown off by their proud owners.
A movie star car
As he stood surveying the rainbow around him, Hollywood entrepreneur Jose Gonzalez said he’s seeing more Lamborghinis on the streets and roads of Miami and Fort Lauderdale in the past decade or so. And Gonzalez, a Lamborghini owner himself — the 1980 Countach, a vintage model featured in The Wolf of Wall Street whose doors open upward — said the best explanation for the sheer numbers and variety of exotics and exotically priced on view is simple.
“I think in South Florida there is more cash flow than in some other places,” he said.
There is also an eager willingness by some to divert some of it to owning some of the most expensive cars on the planet. A Lamborghini Aventador S has a top speed of 217 mph. This isn’t the kind of car you buy because you care what other people think. This is the kind of car you buy because you want to zoom ahead.
So hyper-driven has local Lambo love become that the brand, which has marked its 60th anniversary by introducing an SUV and a hybrid 217-mph model, has expanded its retail reach with a redesign of one of its busiest South Florida dealerships. The Davie dealership is one of three in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The numbers aren’t big — these are not Toyotas, after all — but given the eye-popping $507,353 price of a 2022 Lamborghini Aventador, the local market has been quite lucrative for Lamborghini. With 516 sales last year, Florida trailed only California’s 680 sales. The company had its greatest sales to date, with 2,721 Lamborghinis shipped to the U.S. alone in 2022.
Broward dealer upgrades
At the January showroom ribbon-cutting in Davie for Lamborghini Broward, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann mingled with guests and fellow loyalists of the coveted brand.
The Lamborghini Broward dealership feels more like a swanky lounge than a place where people buy cars. The showroom floor looks so clean that you could practically eat off of it, and each Lamborghini model looks as if it came right off a factory line in heaven. People don’t shop here for a car; they shop for a lifestyle.
It’s an exclusive club with an extremely high bar to entry. Larry Zinn is executive general manager of Warren Henry Auto Group, the North Miami Beach company that operates the Lamborghini Broward dealership, and son of founder Warren Henry Zinn. Most of Zinn’s Lamborghini customers are locals, he said. Once in the owners club, many come back to check out newest models or to hang out for a cup of coffee and compare notes about their luxury rides.
At Gulfstream Park, what might seem wretched excess to some is just a bit of extra sparkle to Lamborghini owners. Like, you know, crushed diamonds in the paint job.
It was impossible to walk past Cathy Durante and Debbie Scott’s Lamborghinis without staring.
Scott met Durante while shopping for Lamborghinis at Prestige Imports Miami in 2020. “She was looking for a black one and I said, ‘No, get the yellow,” Scott said, as people moved in to take pictures of her car.
Durante’s canary yellow 2019 Hurácan, which she drove to the show, has a listed top speed of 212 mph, although she uses it as her daily vehicle and respects the speed limit.
Diamond finish
Next to it was Scott’s dandelion yellow 2014 Aventador Anniversario edition. As one of 100 cars like it worldwide, that’s the one with diamond crumbs in the paint — she swears it to be true — which make the car look like it is sparkling when you get close.
Lamborghini ownership can be practical, too, Scott said. She also drives a URUS, the new Lamborghini SUV, which she left at home. She loves that she can drive around in a Lamborghini with space for her groceries and more than the typical two seats in many models of the car.
And that SUV, starting price $225,501, is meant to be the attainable Lamborghini, a lure for those not quite ready to drop half a million dollars on a new Aventador.
Also in store, for the populist appeal: the company’s first hybrid version of its Aventador model. The first in what the company hopes will be an extensive line of hybrid alternatives. Winkelmann said the company will eventually fully hybridize the lineup and reduce emissions from Lamborghinis — especially beloved for the engine and exhaust roar — by 50% starting in 2025. For Lamborghini, there is a sheen of social responsibility after burning 13 miles to the gallon for 60 years.
“It’s very important to be sustainable for a company like ours,” he said. “This is the promise we are giving to our customers, not only that we are reducing emissions, but that new cars will be more performing than the ones before.”
Generational shift
The brand, founded by Ferruccio Lamborghini 60 years ago, has always had to try harder to compete with its Italian arch-rival. Unlike Ferrari, it tried but never managed to compete on the professional race circuit. Always a bit more outrageous, Lamborghini has positioned itself as a car fit for a superhero like Batman, like the 2007 Murcielago Bruce Wayne drove in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.”
There has been a generational shift in South Florida from Ferraris to Lamborghinis. The 1980s television show Miami Vice made the city famous to a wide audience and its two main characters regularly drove Ferraris. Lamborghinis were barely shown in a few episodes of the show’s 113-episode run.
Nearly 30 years later, “Bad Boys For Life,” a 2020 film sequel set in Miami starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, featured a 2012 Lamborghini Aventador during a flashy nightclub scene and a 2019 URUS during a scene on South Beach.
For some, owning a Lamborghini was a dream they chased for decades. And it’s no longer just for boys.
Like Durante and Scott, Fort Lauderdale native Juliette Wendelin loves her Lamborghini. The Fort Lauderdale native remembers driving a third-generation hand-me-down 1987 Ford Crown Victoria in her youth. Her car constantly leaked oil and she dreamed about one day owning a “supercar.” Now in her late 30s, with a productive career as a real estate investor, the Florida Atlantic University graduate’s first Lamborghini was a grigio hati 2020 Hurácan EVO, a platinum-colored sports car with a top speed of 212 mph.
For Wendelin, it’s a special thrill riding to a car show surrounded by other Lamborghini drivers, even if you have to stick to the 65-mph speed limit.
She fondly remembers driving south on I-75 to a Supercar Saturdays event in Pembroke Pines when several other Lamborghinis drove next to her.
“It’s driving in a caravan of other Lamborghinis like the Aventador, URUS or Hurácan,” she said. “There was a group of 12 cars and all these colors were flying by and it was such a great day. That’s what it is for Lamborghini owners. You’re in that group, and you see the kids driving by taking videos of you and they’re dreaming the same things you are. It’s just fun.”
Take it to the track
Those who want to explore the limits of their Lamborghini have to take it to the track. Homestead Speedway, for instance, gives owners that opportunity to drive their cars at top speeds on the track.
Since the pandemic emerged in March 2020, JC Carr has noticed the soaring number of these fine cars on the South Florida roads, and he’s reaped the benefit. A student at University of Alabama, he runs a business called WhipsMiami, a car brokerage that specializes in luxury vehicles. Carr, 20, finds cars out of state and has them shipped to Miami. As the member of a 200-person Lamborghini groupchat, he’s noticed “a large explosion” of Lamborghini owners since the beginning of the pandemic. He sold 27 URUS vehicles in 2022 alone, for example.
If you can’t afford to buy one, but lust after a Lamborghini, you can always rent for the day thanks to companies like Diamond Exotic Rentals.
But for Wendelin, who awaits the arrival of her third Lamborghini and is a member of a global community of like-minded car lovers, owning one is priceless.
