1992 Lamborghini Diablo

Chassis No. ZA9DE07A0MLA12366
Engine No. L522 382

When the Diablo broke cover at Monte Carlo in January 1990, it arrived as the fastest, most powerful, and most expensive Lamborghini yet built, and the first road car from Sant'Agata capable of exceeding 322 km/h. Marcello Gandini, designer of the Miura and Countach, gave the Diablo its wedge silhouette and scissor doors, carrying forward the language of its predecessor while smoothing its hardest edges into a cleaner, more aerodynamic form. A mid-mounted 5.7-liter V12, fed for the first time by fuel injection, delivered 492 horsepower at 7,000 rpm through a five-speed manual. Named, in Lamborghini tradition, after a 19th-century fighting bull, the Diablo replaced the Countach as the marque's standard-bearer and quickly became the definitive supercar poster of its decade.

These earliest cars remain the most coveted of the line, distinguished by their pop-up headlights and pure rear-drive character, uncomplicated by the four-wheel-drive hardware that arrived with the later VT and untouched by the fixed-headlight restyling of the model's second half. Chassis number 12366 is one such first-series example, delivered new to Belgium in August 1991 and finished in Rosso Perlato over a Panna leather interior, a fittingly evocative livery for a Lamborghini flagship. The 'M' in its VIN identifies the car as a 1991 model, though the certificate of conformity was stamped by Lamborghini's Benelux importer in Groot-Bijgaarden on 12 August 1992.

The Diablo was ordered new by Jef Jurion, among the finest Belgian footballers of the postwar era. A playmaker of rare vision who famously took the field in spectacles, Jurion won nine league titles across fifteen seasons with RSC Anderlecht, claimed the Golden Shoe in 1957 and again in 1962, and earned 64 caps for the Red Devils. His late strike against Real Madrid in the 1962 European Cup put the reigning power of the competition out in the first round and earned him the nickname Mister Europe. He remains, at 89, a fixture of Knokke, where he settled after his playing career.

Jurion placed the car, practically from new, with less than 1,200 kms in a showroom near Knokke-Heist on the road that carries visitors into the center of Knokke, where it remained, undriven, for seven years. The present owner acquired the car in 1999, directly from Jurion and its first Belgian registration followed on 12 May 2000-Jurion had never road-registered the car. Under its second owner, the Diablo saw modest use in the first years, entrusted throughout to a single private specialist. Service records document attention at 1,200 km in December 1999, 2,250 km in August 2000, 4,900 km in April 2003 and again in November 2005, and 5,350 km in June 2008. The Diablo mainly remained on static display in the owner's home garage and was hardly ever exercised since 2008. Servicing continued routinely nonetheless, and the service overview accompanies the car.

The Diablo is offered in unrestored order, its exterior untouched and original, carrying the honest character of a car that has been preserved from day one. The long period at rest has inevitably left its mark beneath the engine cover. While the V12 starts and runs, seals and rubber components throughout have hardened with age, and the car is in need of a full engine overhaul. The considerable work of rebuilding the fuel injection system has already been completed by Belgian classic car specialist Project STS, who further renewed the spark plugs, engine oil, and battery, repaired the bonnet hinge, and dry ice blasted the engine bay, the work totaling more than €14.700.

It is accompanied by its owner's manual retained in the original leather Diablo pouch, together with a second key. For the collector seeking the purest expression of the Diablo, this early, low-mileage car in stunning colors would be a natural fit in any collection. What remains is the opportunity to recommission a genuinely original first-series Diablo, and to give the car the road use it has waited more than three decades to see.